Reading Chinese characters is one of the most intimidating parts of getting started with mahjong for many Filipinos and other folks who don’t read Chinese. But fear not, there are a couple of easy strategies. Of course you can always get a set with western-style numerals. American mahjong sets work just fine for Filipino mahjong—just remove the joker tiles or treat them like flowers. Also many Chinese sets come with numbered tiles, and some people will even mark non-numbered tiles with nail polish (just make sure you don’t alter the sides or backs, which would destroy the tiles’ anonymity).

My recommendation, however, is just to take some time to learn the characters. For basic Filipino mahjong, this really only requires learning nine characters for the numbers in the character suit.

It should go without saying that written Chinese is one of the most rich and beautiful writing systems, with its own way of conceptualizing the characters and how to properly execute each constituent stroke. For our purposes, however, a less orthodox approach is sufficient. These are the mnemonic devices my mahjong barkada* came up with.

The first three Chinese numbers are easy: simply one 一, two 二, and three 三 horizontal strokes respectively.

Four 四 looks like a square, which has four sides.

Five 五 kinda looks like a five with an extra line segment.

Six 六 looks kinda like an “A” for “ant” 🐜 and ants have six legs.

Seven 七 looks like a lowercase cursive “t,” corresponding to Tuesday or Thursday, which are days of the week, and there are 7 days in a week. Alternatively, it looks kinda like a handwritten “7” upside down. On some sets, the character is slightly rotated, looking more like an “x.” X marks the spot for buried treasure on a pirate map, and pirates sailed the seven seas 🏴‍☠️.

Eight 八 looks like a mountain, and as Marvin Gaye famously sang, “[eight] no mountain high enough.” 

Nine 九 kinda looks like the Greek letter pi. Pi is close to 3, and 3 squared is 9. Okay, that’s a little more of a stretch, but it’s the last one anyway.

On that note, do you have your own tips and tricks for remembering these characters? Let us know in the comments.

*Stephanie Sia, Alex Chin, Patrick Buenaventura, and Allison Buenaventura. The pirate mnemonic for “7” was proposed by Stuart Sia.