As Nicole Yu, 28, shuffles dozens of green-and-white tiles on the table in front of her, she ticks off a hearty list of places around San Francisco where she has recently played mahjong. She and a friend, Andrea Mendoza, 26, have enjoyed the ancient Chinese game in bars, restaurants, parks, apartments, and, on this particular night, a stunning converted church on an otherwise nondescript block in SoMa. 

Yu, a member of St. Joseph’s Art Society, which hosts mahjong nights once a month, watched her Chinese grandparents play when she was a kid. But she didn’t start learning the game, which combines skill and luck, until watching a climactic scene in the 2018 blockbuster “Crazy Rich Asians.”

She and Mendoza are playing with Peggy Krueger, who is several decades their senior. All three say they appreciate that the game is tactile and requires no small amount of strategic thinking. Plus, it brings together people from all strata of the city, while providing an alternative to hanging out in bars.  

“I love mahjong because I’m more of an introvert,” says Mendoza. “And I like that it occupies some of the social energy, but you can still chat.”

For these reasons, the game’s popularity has exploded since the pandemic, particularly in San Francisco, where the frequency of mahjong events spiked nearly 150% between 2023 and 2024, according to Eventbrite. Recently, the complicated tile game has popped up all over the city, from public spaces like Union Square, the Ferry Building, Civic Center Plaza, and Portsmouth Square to restaurants and bars, including Boichik Bagels, Manny’s, Standard Deviant Brewing, Pier 23 Cafe, Paname, Baba’s House, and Mr. Mahjong’s. There are even tutorials at the toy store Just for Fun. 

Mahjong events are replacing trivia nights as a convenient excuse to hang out with friends, meet strangers, and enjoy some friendly competition. For bars and restaurants, the game can fill seats on slow evenings, attract customers, and build a crew of regulars. Players and event hosts say the game has transcended its reputation as a pastime for Asian elders, thanks to a societal embrace of nostalgia and a hunger for real-world connections. 

The fast-casual Chinese restaurant Mamahuhu hosts weekly events at its Inner Richmond location, where a mix of experienced players and beginners pack tables inside and out, scrambling tiles and grazing on $5 egg rolls and beer. 

“Mondays are typically a slow night in restaurants, but we don’t see that at all. We’re super busy because of mahjong,” says Maggie Timboe, the marketing manager. “It’s a really awesome way to bring people in.” 

Even when it’s not a big moneymaker, game nights can create loyal customers, according to Dragon Well co-owner Christina Tan, who began playing the game herself last year. The Marina restaurant transforms into a “Mahjong Lair” every Tuesday evening, when it would typically be closed. Players pay a $20 entrance fee that includes a selection of snacks, and the restaurant offers drink specials. “I love seeing people having fun and utilizing our space in a different way,” she says. “It becomes a real night out.”

To extend that energy, the restaurant created an “East Wind” table (a reference to one of the game’s tiles) that groups of players can reserve — mahjong set included — any day of the week. 

For Mahjong Lair events, Tan brings in instructors to teach newbies how to pong and chow with the best of them. Andrew Keeler teaches, both for pay and as a volunteer, there and at a handful of spots around the city, often carrying a box of chocolates he’s wrapped up to look like mahjong tiles or sporting a suit of the same pattern. 

Keeler has played (and taught) crowds of 20-somethings, usually Hong Kong style, as well as groups of “old Jewish ladies,” who primarily play American mahjong, which is more complicated and involves additional tiles. While both styles have their devotees, the Hong Kong version can be learned in a couple of hours versus several multiple-hour sessions, so it tends to dominate most of the newer clubs and events, Keeler said. 

“I’m 63, playing with all these 30-year-olds. Community-wise, it’s amazing,” he says. “It’s not awkward for people to come alone, because you’re meeting new people all the time.”  

He sees the post-pandemic yearning for socialization and young people’s general shift away from drinking as the main drivers of mahjong’s recent rise. And while he does expect the scene to cool down a little in the next few years — these days, you can play mahjong at a different spot in the city every day of the week — he thinks its popularity will endure. 

For Jenn Lui, cofounder of the speakeasy 13 Orphans and community space Baba’s House, which hosts mahjong every night, seeing the game become so popular so quickly, even outside the Asian community, makes her “giddy.” She grew up watching her parents play and “never thought it could become such a big thing,” she says. “I love that it feels like we’re both preserving our culture and introducing it to the wider public.”

While it’s hard to pinpoint the reason, she theorizes that people are gravitating toward activities that slow them down, as everything else in the world seems to move more frenetically.  

Nicole Wong, an Oakland-based author whose The Mahjong Project events and book helped spur the boom in the Bay Area and beyond, said the game has taken off particularly among young people eager to preserve their cultural heritage. Like her, many grew up hearing clacking tiles from their parents' or grandparents' games. “Mahjong is almost a way to time travel,” she says — back to the mid-1800s, when it was created, or to the mid-1980s, when the current generation watched older relatives play.

Wong has hosted mahjong events in independent bookstores, breweries, libraries, and at street fairs, and one thing that always stands out is how the game wrenches people from their devices. “You can’t really be on your phone while playing,” she says, a welcome salve in our distraction-addled age.

And unlike increasingly popular running clubs, mahjong doesn’t require breaking a sweat, says Ryan Lee, the 25-year-old founder of Youth Luck Leisure. 

His mahjong events — which sell out in hours and take place at a rolling roster of venues, including Hawthorn, Harborview, 606, Imperial Palace, and The Felix — provide “a really organic way to meet people.” YLL mahjong nights, which he caps at an impressive 200 guests, feature sexy lighting, specialty cocktails, and DJs (though he ensures the music is at “an appropriate level” for mingling and playing). 

Although young people of Asian descent made up most of YLL’s initial participants, Lee has noticed an increasing variety of backgrounds and generations. He notes that people generally want to find outlets for “sharing culture” these days, and mahjong satisfies that craving while being something “that you could play for the rest of your life.” 

He sees his mission as helping people connect with the game and one another — and getting young people to leave the house on Friday and Saturday nights. 

“We want to be part of the rebuilding of San Francisco,” he says. “Our nightlife is not as popping, and I think that people love that this is a change of pace.”