Proto-mahjong › Wang ma que, Changsha kings sparrow
Wang ma que, Changsha kings sparrow
王麻雀; eight wild king tiles, 13-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, Hua ma que, North China flower sparrow · bibliography #26
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, Hua ma que, North China flower 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: inferred — read off the rules by this compendium; no source states it
No source names wang ma que's parent. It is hung here on Proto-mahjong because its eight wild 'king' tiles carry the suit kings and 摠王 of the 1870s Himly set, which the Ningbo 'plain' game dropped. Stanwick and Xu class it as a southern variant and point to a matching Vietnamese eight-king game of 1950. That Vietnamese line runs through the chart's disputed Nanyang node, so the tree cannot draw the link.
Cross-comparison
What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.
- [1] the rule description, from Liu Yishu (1941): 王麻雀 'wang ma que' 'prevails in Changsha, Hunan'. It is played on 13 tiles (hua ma que has 16), and 'there are eight Inner Flowers': the cash, strings and myriads kings, each wild in its suit; 摠王 wild for any suit tile, dragon or wind; 元王 wild for any dragon; 合王 wild for any suit tile but not winds or dragons; 喜王 wild for any wind; and 陞王 wild for anything. 'The points and other rules are all the same' as common ma que
- [1] the southern link: Depaulis noticed that the Changsha set matches, bar one tile, a Vietnamese eight-king game described by Nguyen Xuan Mai in 1950 (hua, yuan, xi, he, tong, suo, wan, zong), with comparable functions. The authors take this as grounds for 'considering Changsha wang ma que a Southern China variant'
- [2] lists the eight wild tiles of Vietnamese sets and notes the 王麻雀 functions beside them: 總百搭 'in 王麻雀 may replace any suit tile or honour', and 花百搭 'in 王麻雀 serves as another 陞王, replacing any suit tile or honour'. It says rare variants in Vietnamese and Thai mahjong 'such as 王麻雀' have dedicated wild tiles
Reading it
The rules survive only through one text, Liu's 1941 manual, as Stanwick and Xu translate it. Chinese Wikipedia repeats the wild-tile functions but gives no independent source for the Changsha game. The case for putting it here is structural. Its eight kings are the Himly set's jokers expanded, and they match the Vietnamese eight-king game. That makes wang ma que the likeliest bridge between the 1870s proto sets and Vietnamese play. The chart cannot draw that link, because it runs Vietnamese play through the disputed Nanyang node.
In the tree
Descends from Proto-mahjong, as the analysis above places it; the chart has no node for it.