Culture and Leisure

Joy, luck chase in mahjong clubs

People who come in a group may cheat on others. "It is not good for one person to play with three strangers," Lai said.

And there are no private rooms for customers. The parlour charges the winner of each round from HK$8 to HK$80, depending on the players' winning criteria.

Although playing with strangers is not common in mahjong clubs, some young customers do invite people through web forums to come and play the game together in a club. Grace Leung, a university graduate who is jobless, said she made the online invitations twice when her friends were not free for mahjong.

And there are always customers who go to mahjong clubs for money. "Winning money is an appeal to me," said Lui Kwanchun, a 21-year-old university student. Lui said he visited mahjong clubs with his friends once a week and played for seven to eight hours each time.

Joe Tang Yiu-cho, the social worker supervisor of Caritas Addicted Gambling
Counselling, cautioned that mahjong clubs might be more harmful to young people than mahjong parlours, as the impact was not obvious to notice.

While the opening hours of mahjong parlours are usually restricted to 12 p.m. and their customers have to be aged at least 18, mahjong clubs can operate around the clock and there is no age limitation on people entering the clubs, the social worker said. "They (teenagers) may get addicted to playing mahjong," Tang warned.

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