Asian Gaming Culture
Bamboo, circles, characters, winds, dragons: a plain reading of the iconography and its regional variations.
The three numbered suits are bamboo, circles, and characters; the honours are winds and dragons. Digital tile games frequently keep the artwork while dropping the honours entirely, which changes the mathematics of the board considerably.
The game travelled through ports, living rooms, and app stores, and picked up a different set of rules at every stop.
Nine unwritten rules, collected from tables in Surabaya, Penang, and Hong Kong.