Proto-mahjong › Hua ma que, North China flower sparrow
Hua ma que, North China flower sparrow
花麻雀; king and joker tiles, 16-tile hand
Sources
The documents this entry rests on, as published. Each can be opened and checked; nothing in this part is anybody’s reading of them.
Stanwick, Michael and Hongbing Xu. "Flowers and Kings." themahjongtileset.co.uk. canonical checked 2026-09-24
chart’s note Early ma que tile-set research underlying the Hua Maque and Wang Maque material.
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Late Qing style, Wang ma que, Changsha kings sparrow · bibliography #26
Ebashi Takashi (江橋崇). 「二 一九世紀の中国麻雀牌（プロト・マージャン）」, in 麻雀牌が語る麻雀の歴史. Japan Playing Card Museum (日本かるた文化館), 2018-2023. supporting checked 2026-09-24
https://japanplayingcardmuseum.com/mahjongtiles-19thcentury-china/
AI summary Eleven-page Japanese study of the 19th-century tile sets, drawing on the Chiba Mahjong Museum's collection: the Glover, Himly, Wilkinson, Laufer, Culin and Nagawa sets, plus two 1880s sets not in the English literature (the Ebashi 中發 set and the Noguchi 'court' set). Frames the period as 花麻雀 ('flower sparrow') giving way to Ningbo's 清麻雀 ('plain sparrow'). Pages are cited by number.
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Chinese archaic, Chinese pre-classical · bibliography #111
Chinese Wikipedia: 麻雀牌 (mahjong tiles). supporting checked 2026-09-24
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%BA%BB%E9%9B%80%E7%89%8C
AI summary History section on the early sets, the Sheng Xuanhuai set, inner and outer flowers, the northern 花麻雀 with twenty or more flowers, and the eight wild tiles of Vietnamese sets and of 王麻雀.
Also cited on: Proto-mahjong, Wang ma que, Changsha kings sparrow · bibliography #112
Analysis
Written by an AI model from the sources above. It is a reading of them, not a source in its own right: every figure in it points back to a numbered source, and where the two disagree, the source is right.
Assessment
- Confidence
- documented a published ruleset or rule description exists and is cited
- Evidence
- partial sources agree on some points but disagree or say nothing on others
Added by this compendium
The source chart does not carry this variant. It was added because the research turned up a ruleset the chart has no node for. Everything the chart does claim is unchanged.
Parent link: sourced — a source states this parentage
Two researchers working separately put this game on the proto side of the tree. Stanwick and Xu argue that the king, joker and season tiles of the 1870s Himly and Glover sets are early forms of the 'inner' and 'outer' flowers of North China's hua ma que, whose play Liu Yishu described in 1941. Ebashi calls the pre-Ningbo game 花麻雀 and places the no-dragon Himly branch in North China. Both frame it as a hypothesis, and so should the reader. The chart has no node for it.
Cross-comparison
What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.
- [1] the rule description: Liu Yishu, 麻雀的經驗與技巧 (1941), on North China's 花麻雀 'hua ma que' (Beiping and Tianjin). Outer flowers 'should be five sets', remembered as 天東春雨蘭: the heaven/earth/man/harmony kings, the four direction kings, the seasons, rain/sun/wind/snow and orchid/lotus/chrysanthemum/plum. Players add more sets (lute-chess-calligraphy-painting, duke-marquis-general-minister, even wartime slogans), up to nine or eleven. Inner flowers are four: the cash, strings and myriads kings, each wild within its suit, and the 總王, wild for any suit tile or wind. A blank engraved 聽用 is wild for anything. Each player holds sixteen tiles, and 'The game-play is the same as common ma que'
- [1] the link to the root: the Himly set has the same inner flowers as hua ma que, and the Himly and Glover sets have three of its five outer-flower groups. So the authors argue the 1870s sets 'contain very early examples' of hua ma que's flowers, used the same way. The 1924 Nakamura set from Dalian matches hua ma que's full tile list. The authors frame all this as a hypothesis, and note that in the Sheng Xuanhuai game the suit kings were played as outer flowers instead
- [2] independently calls the pre-Ningbo game 花麻雀 'flower sparrow' (page 5), reads the no-dragon Himly set as a branch that split off before the dragons appeared, 'probably in North China and the north-east, Beijing, Tianjin, Dalian' (page 4), and places the 1924 Nakamura set after that split
- [3] 'The first game with many flower tiles was 花麻雀, popular in northern China. It usually had 20 or more flowers; one source even says 44'
Reading it
The game is real and described in writing. Liu Yishu's 1941 manual gives its tile list, its wild tiles and its 16-tile hand, as translated by Stanwick and Xu. The Nakamura set photographed at Dalian in 1924 matches that list. What is argued rather than shown is the descent. Stanwick and Xu say the 1870s kings and jokers are early hua ma que flowers, and Ebashi separately puts the pre-dragon Himly branch in North China. Both call it a hypothesis, and neither has a 19th-century rule text. The sources agree that the game existed, where it was played and what its flowers were. They are silent on how it was scored.
In the tree
Descends from Proto-mahjong, as the analysis above places it; the chart has no node for it.