Mahjong by Annelise Heinz

Author:Annelise Heinz [Heinz, Annelise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

An Allied Game

When the soldiers’ scripted dialogue on “Women Can Take It” encountered the National Mah Jongg League’s foreign-sounding name on the recreation room donation plaque, one commented warily, “Mah sounds kind of Chinese.” The other soldier cheerily replied, “Yes, it’s a Chinese game all right, and that ‘sets’ it with me. Only a lot of swell American women are playing it right now, and contributing their proceeds to furnish rooms like this all over.” The broadcast thus domesticated the game by connecting the game’s foreign origins to its homey American form and emphasized mahjong as an Allied cultural link.68

Wartime alliances accelerated the shift to positive portrayals of China begun in the 1930s. Mahjong made rare appearances as a wholesome, even healing recreation in popular fiction. In a 1934 novel, the camaraderie of a daily mahjong game breathes life back into a World War I veteran suffering from long-term physical and psychic wounds. After dusting off the mahjong box that had been ignored for years, the narrator reflected, “there must have been some small Chinese elf with kindness in his slant eyes shut up in that lacquer box.”69 As in the 1920s, the text personified Chinese culture through the game and did so in language that highlighted racial difference and caricatured exoticism. However, this was a far more benevolent spirit of mahjong than the “heathen Chinee” and “evil” tricksters who peopled earlier representations.70 Not long after the book’s publication, the League gathered at the grand Ruby Foo’s Den in Manhattan to play, dine, and fundraise for United China Relief. Speaking to them were Lee Ya-Ching, a pathbreaking female aviator who solicited support across the Americas for United China Relief, and author Carl Glick, who helped Americans reconceptualize Chinese American tongs as mutual aid societies rather than violent gangs.71 With its red lanterns and ornate wallpaper mimicking Chinese painting, the restaurant exemplified an aesthetic of carefully marketed Americanized Oriental exoticism.72 The League’s newsletter featured a photograph of the organization’s officers, all white women, smiling in front of the restaurant’s life-sized statue of Buddha topped with a pagoda-style bower.73 Although the League generally emphasized the game’s Chinese origins far less than did the 1920s fad culture, the Allied connection became another link to patriotism. Viola Cecil hosted mahjong dinners in her home to support United China Relief. The League’s newsletter encouraged readers to host their own, as “Linked to America, as China is, by the bonds of a common cause, her need becomes our responsibility.”74

Once the United States joined the alliance against Japan, popular media began in earnest to promote an image of a noble and long-suffering Chinese people.75 Less than two months after Pearl Harbor, San Francisco columnist Herb Caen emphasized the unifying patriotism found in Chinatown. “The American-born Chinese are still bewildered by the traditions of their elders, the Chinese from the old country are shocked by the antics of the young generation—and yet everywhere you’ll find true Americanism, true contempt for fascism, and a true determination to stick to the weary fight till the Axis is ground to bits,” Caen wrote.

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