Tiles and titans: Meet the local company fueling B.C.’s mahjong mania

The Chinese game of mahjong is having a moment.

Meghan Markle loves it. (She and her “Maj Squad” play at girls’ nights, she confessed on her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan.) Julia Roberts gushed to late night show host Stephen Colbert that she plays weekly with actress niece Emma Roberts and their girlfriends. The classic four-person parlour game has also turned into a must-have amenity for luxury hotels: Ace Hotel New York, for one, hosts regular game nights.

Here in B.C., the renaissance has arrived. The newly launched Lucky Tile Mahjong Events is introducing people to the traditional game in a fun, pressure-free environment. While the offerings are still in their infancy, Lucky Tile hosts learn-to-play seminars and practice socials, as well as corporate activations and community gatherings. The demand has been crazy: events are selling out quickly and are frequently waitlisted.

“A lot of people shy away from learning new things, but it’s been amazing to see how many people will come and frankly not be good at something,” says co-founder Vivian McCormick. Though she only started playing in 2024, the game was a fixture of her childhood. (“My mom was always playing with her friends, but I was never invited to the table,” she recalls.) Today, she says, “it’s a fun thing—it gets people off their phone and looking at each other and talking.”

A recent sold-out two-hour learn-to-play session I attended drew dozens of people of all skill levels (I was green—a.k.a. never touched a tile), all coming together to learn the Hong Kong style of play. Each table is assigned an “auntie” (really, just an experienced coach—ours was a man in his 20s who grew up playing with family) who helps explain rules and strategy and walks players through practice rounds. The tile game is fast paced (with similar play to rummy, if you’re a card player), with the goal of forming sets of three or four matching or sequential tiles.

For McCormick, both cultural and age-based inclusion have been central to building Lucky Tile with co-founder Sandy Gunn. The duo play monthly with a group of businesswomen called Joy Luck Club Vancouver, and launched Lucky Tile as a breakout company because so many people were reaching out to ask how they could learn to play. So far, they’re seeing people of all ages (they taught a 100-year-old woman at one session and had three generations of one family—teens, parents and grandparents—at another).

“We want people to take the game back to their homes and family and friends—to spread the joy of the game and the community that comes with knowing how to play it,” says McCormick.

Like McCormick, Lucky Tile event participant Cindy Yu grew up around the game (“the sound of the tiles is a core memory from childhood—it was so comforting,” she says), but hadn’t played for many years until she was re-introduced by one of the organizers. “The session was for three hours. I was like, ‘Who plays for three hours?’ At the end, I literally begged to keep playing. I was so hooked after that first session,” she says.

That newfound passion quickly spurred Yu to buy her own mahjong table from Facebook Marketplace and start regular “mahjong and martini” sessions at home with her besties. She attended the Lucky Tile event to practice and play more, says she’ll be back again, and predicts most other attendees will return, too.

“It’s a feeling of community I have not felt for a long time,” she says. “It’s a good, fun and wholesome way to authentically connect with people. I’ve gotten all my friends hooked, too. I think this is a moment—and it’s just going to explode.