W hen my mom found out I was planning to travel to Dallas to play in a Lunar New Year mah-jongg tournament, she texted a reasonable query: “Don’t they require some level of competence?” And yet, during the third week of February, I found myself first at a dazzling private home in Dallas, and then at a luxury hotel, sitting down with my more refined counterparts to play in a competition in the epicenter of the country’s American mah-jongg resurgence. First, a bit about how I got here. One of my