The Mahjong Renaissance

In a city where wellness trends rise and fall faster than subway delays, mahjong has quietly emerged as New York's most unexpected social cure. What was once relegated to community centers and family gatherings has found new life in sleek downtown studios, trendy rooftops and intimate apartment sessions where twenty-somethings gather to click tiles and decompress from digital overload.

Enter Green Tile Social Club, the studio rewriting the rules of an ancient game for contemporary players. Founded with the radical notion that tradition doesn't require stuffiness, Green Tile has transformed the typically intimidating learning curve into something approachable, even addictive. Their philosophy is refreshingly simple: strip away the gatekeeping, maintain the strategy and create space for genuine connection in an increasingly disconnected world.

The timing couldn't be more perfect. As screen fatigue reaches epidemic proportions and meditation apps fail to deliver the promised zen, people are rediscovering the satisfaction of tactile games that demand presence. Mahjong offers something apps cannot: the weight of tiles in your hands, the satisfying click of a winning combination and the irreplaceable chemistry of reading opponents across a table.

But Green Tile's approach goes beyond teaching strategy. They've created a modern ritual around the game — one that honours its cultural significance while making space for new traditions. Their sessions attract everyone from stressed executives seeking analog escape to creative types drawn to the game's mathematical poetry. The result is something rare in New York: a social activity that actually slows time down.

The Standard recently welcomed Green Tile for an exclusive session on June 9, exploring how this ancient game fits into our modern pursuit of meaningful leisure. We spoke with co-founder Joanne Xu about democratising tradition, building community through competition and why the future of socialising might just involve more tiles and fewer screens.

Green Tile Social Club was founded in 2022 in our cofounder Sarah's Lower East Side living room. The four of us (Joanne Xu, Grace Liu, Ernest Chan, and Sarah Teng) had met up for a casual Sunday night of mahjong. Though we'd all gone to the same university and had mutual friends, this was the first time we'd ever truly hung out — and the conversations naturally steered toward our shared culture, making friends in the city, and how surprisingly good it felt to be playing mahjong again. One night turned into weekly games, and before long some of our other friends had caught on. A scrappy logo design, an Instagram, and a Partiful later, we started hosting one free meetup a month for our friends, their friends, their friends' friends, and so on. What we never expected was this realization was the sense of belonging and purpose we'd find hosting and creating this community from scratch. So the more events people asked for, the more inspired we were to start pushing the boundaries of what our mahjong events could look like — it wasn't long before we were concepting supper clubs and speed-friending events and 500 to 800 person Lunar New Year parties, all inspired by the beauty and power of mahjong that we'd witnessed ourselves.

Green Tile Social Club was founded in 2022 in our cofounder Sarah’s Lower East Side living room. The four of us (Joanne Xu, Grace Liu, Ernest Chan, and Sarah Teng) had met up for a casual Sunday night of mahjong. Though we’d all gone to the same university and had mutual friends, this was the first time we’d truly hung out—and the conversation naturally steered toward our shared culture, making friends in the city, and how surprisingly good it felt to be playing mahjong again.

One night turned into weekly games, and before long, some of our other friends had caught on. A scrappy logo design, an Instagram, and a Partiful later, we started hosting one free meetup a month for our friends, their friends, their friends’ friends, and so on. What we never expected was the sense of belonging and purpose we’d find in hosting and creating this community from scratch.

The more events people asked for, the more inspired we were to push the boundaries of what our mahjong events could look like—it wasn’t long before we were concepting supper clubs, speed-friending events, and 500–800-person Lunar New Year parties, all inspired by the beauty and power of mahjong we’d witnessed ourselves.

The large majority of our community is young Asian Americans living in New York City. Whether they’re transplants or lifers, what bonds us all are the shared lived experiences of being Asian and growing up in this country.

We’re mostly third culture kids who, for many reasons, have always had to navigate living in a very digital-first, socially complex, and oftentimes isolating world. At GTSC and beyond, we’re seeing a moment in time where younger generations crave simple, analog joy. Layer in the visceral sense of belonging that comes from existing in a social space surrounded by people who look like you and understand you without knowing a thing about you—it’s pretty powerful stuff.

Mahjong is intergenerational and always will be. Asian culture hinges on collectivist, family-oriented values, so many of us have longstanding relationships with mahjong that tie back to family—if you didn’t play at game nights growing up, you certainly had an auntie or uncle who was always playing at the community center or after family parties.

Green Tile Social Club was created in part to honor the mahjong legacy our elders started, but it was really important that we also made space for our generation to interpret those rituals in our own ways. Culture is meant to evolve with every generation’s passing hands.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying: our community is by and for young Asians like us, but the elders know they always have a standing invite. And we know they’ll beat us every time.

Both and neither. We truly believe that culture is meant to evolve with each generation, and part of that responsibility is the act of preservation. We’re not reinventing anything, because the game itself doesn’t need reinventing. Green Tile is just our way of contributing to the ever-growing culture that surrounds the game.

It’s a beautiful thing to see how our community inherently embraces, protects, and cares for the game as much as we do. We’re inspired by them every day.

In the early days, we nicknamed this phenomenon the “mahjong renaissance.” We even proclaimed this on the TODAY Show!

This moment feels like the result of so many moving parts—a grown and independent first generation of Asian Americans who are actively defining our own cultural identities, the digital fatigue we experience daily, and an intrinsic need to find community in increasingly disconnected times.

Mahjong is a beautiful game that combines the most human of concepts—connection, luck, timing, strategy, communication. Who wouldn’t want to play?