By Stephinie Phan, Art Director
When third-year biochemistry student Thazin Yee first came to CSUDH, he wanted to join one of the clubs on campus but couldn’t seem to find the right fit. Although he had large gaps of free time between classes, he couldn’t connect with any of the other clubs, so he did the next best thing: he started his own.
Yee founded the Riichi Mahjong Club in the fall of 2022 – a Japanese version of a tile-based game originating from 19th-century China. Mahjong has gained more recognition from popular media like the movie, Crazy Rich Asians released back in 2018 for example.
“I started this group, this club, with my friends,” Yee said. “I just wanted to play this game with my friends. It had to be a very casual, non-competitive, open environment to like learning a new game and also being able to meet people.”
Yee’s group of mahjong enthusiasts has now grown to 36 members, including alumni. Marc Zhune graduated from Dominguez Hills this past May with a degree in criminal justice administration, but still swings by campus from time to time to play a few rounds.
“There’s nothing more than just Riichi Mahjong happening [and] we can just be talking about any topic whether or not it’s our daily lives, habits [or] what’s going on at school,” said Zhune.
First-year psychology student Curtis Yokota is an experienced mahjong player. He joined the club not only to get more involved with campus life, but to keep up his skills.
“Only the last two years of my high school career I actually joined clubs, so I wanted to change it up a little bit during college,” Yokota said.
Members stay connected on the group’s Discord channel and post regular updates to Instagram. English linguistics student Sydney Soy felt he “struck gold” when he discovered the club. He said the group does a good job of staying on top of its social media.
“Our generation and younger, they’re into gaming – they’re into game culture and things that involve Twitch, streamers, a lot of YouTube content,” Soy said. “It is very convenient for me to get notifications and all the little channels are so unique and organized, it’s really nice.”
Yee said the club is trying to overcome the same challenges experienced by other campus groups, like attracting new members and finding meeting space. He’s also looking around for who will take over leadership of the club when he graduates. In the meantime, he is proud of how far the club has come.
“The people that have been a part of this club seem to be really happy to be a part of it,” said Yee. “I want that to continue to be the case, I want this to be the same casual, really cool hangout environment for people after.”
