Re: Notes on Tam Wing Kwong, "The Game of Sparrow as played in China".

From: Dee (d_lau@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
)

>When we play (both traditional CC and HKOS), we
>just draw tiles from the wall until there are 16 tiles left.  

16, eh? Odd. The last remaining unused tiles are sometimes known as
"the king's hand" (thus those tiles should number the amount of tiles
held in the hand - 14, unless playing Taiwanese style, then 16 would
make sense).

>I am curious how other Chinese and non-Chinese players
>actually handle this "dead wall" thing because it is totally foreign
>to me.  

I'm non-Chinese, so I hope I qualify (^_~). In Japanese mah-jongg,
there is a 14-tile dead wall. A separation is kept between the live
wall and the dead wall so the players can easily count how many picks
they have remaining until the end of the hand.

Greetings from Seoul,
Tom