It is not known when the conversion from cards to tiles took place precisely but it most likely occurred in the middle of the 19th century. The earliest surviving tile sets date to around 1870 and were acquired in Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Ningbo.Sloper, Tom. History of Mahjong FAQ 11. Retrieved 6 November 2015. These sets differ from modern ones in several ways. In the Glover sets,In 1875, George B. Glover, a commissioner in the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service during the late nineteenth century, donated a set Mahjong tiles to American Museum of Natural History and the other set to the Long Island Historical Society. They are the two oldest set Mahjong tiles found in the world. there were no "flower" and fā ("green dragon") tiles. In their place were "king" tiles for heaven, earth, man, and harmony and also for each of the 4 "winds" which may have acted as bonus tiles. In the contemporaneous Himly set, there were no zhōng ("red dragon") tiles either. Instead there were the wild cards known as Cash Flower, String Flower, and Myriad Flower plus an additional tile, the king of everything. These early jokers are still found in the Vietnamese and Thai sets.Sloper, Tom. Is my set complete? at sloperama.com. Retrieved 16 May 2016. They may have been removed as the tiles share the same titles as the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). For example, Hong Xiuquan was the self-styled "Heavenly King of Great Peace" and his top subordinates were called east king, south king, west king, and north king.
It is not known when the conversion from cards to tiles took place precisely but it most likely occurred in the middle of the 19th century. The earliest surviving tile sets date to around 1870 and were acquired in Fuzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo.Sloper, Tom. History of Mahjong FAQ 11. Retrieved 6 November 2015. These sets differ from modern ones in several ways. In the Glover sets,In 1875, George B. Glover, a commis,sioner in the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs Service during the late nineteenth century, donated a set Mahjong tiles to American Museum of Natural History and the other set to the Long Island Historical Soc,iety. They are the two oldest set Mahjong tiles found in the world. there were no "flower" and fā ("green dragon") tiles. In their place were "k,ing" tiles for heaven, earth, man, and harmony and also for each of the 4 "winds" which may have acted as bonus tiles. In the contemporaneous Himly set there were no zhōng ("red dragon") tiles either. Instead there were the wild cards known as Cash Flower, String Flower, and Myriad Flower plus an additional tile, the king of everything. These ea,rly jokers are still found in the Vietnamese and Thai sets.Sloper, Tom. Is my set complete? at sloperama.com. Retrieved 16 May 2016. They may have been removed as the tiles share the same titles as the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). For example, Hong Xiuquan was the self-styled "Heavenly King of Great Peace" and his top subordinates were called east king south king, west king and north king.