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Message:: [QUOTE="Shangas, post: 10005021, member: 360"]That said, because there ARE so many variants of the game, not every mahjong set can be used to play every variant. It can make things really hard. A CLASSICAL MAHJONG SET - the kind you pick up in Chinatown as a souvenir - will have 144 tiles (or usually, 148 - 144 playables, and 4 spares). 144 tiles is to play traditional Cantonese/Hong Kong mahjong - the type which most Chinese people will play. It's what I play with my friends at our Straits-Chinese Club here in town. Classical set will look like this: [ATTACH=full]502534[/ATTACH] Exactly 144 tiles. This one's from my collection. Japanese sets only have 136 tiles (no winds & flowers). American sets have 152 tiles (144 + 8 jokers). The list goes on. This is why I said, you gotta be REALLY specific about WHAT type you play. You can't just say "let's play mahjong!!" A classical set has six suits: Coins, Strings of Coins, Myriads of Coins. Also known as Circles, Bamboos, and Characters. That's three. Then the others are the Four Winds (North, East, South and West). Then the Bonus Tiles, which are divided into Flowers, and Seasons. That's the other three. I play mahjong with my cousins during Chinese New Year. Oh man. My cousins and I are playing Cantonese style, my sister-in-law and my brother only do Taiwan style...it gets confusing.[/QUOTE]