Essay About Mahjong

3. Discussion

Based on the research, even though all respondents have played mahjong before, it is found that only small part of them (37.5%) have heard of HEM, meaning nearly two-third of them knew nothing about that. Hence, almost 70% of those who have heard of HEM, got the first understanding from watching television and surfing on the Internet rather than teaching from schools or telling by older generations. The results indicate that they seem knew little about HEM, as they mainly scored “1” or “2”(unfamiliar) on the tools, history and master of HEM. According to a HEM master, the time needed in carving one mahjong (including coloring) is around half an hour, but only 10% of them got the right answer. It possibly illustrates their lack of knowledge on the art of HEM.

In fact, the mahjong stores is disappearing. A large number of respondents (40%) thought the main reason causing the disappearance of mahjong stores might relate to the high rent. The rest of them believed land acquisition (20%), high production cost (20%) and the online stores (20%) were the origin making this. Besides, it was discovered that although over three quarters (77.5%) of them would play the real mahjong, just a small portion of them (20%) have been to mahjong stores. In addition, the art of HEM is vanishing in recent years. Majority proportion of them (42.5%) believed that advance technology on machinery has taken the place of HEM. Usually, the HEM masters would work in their own mahjong stores, and they would help customers carve a new mahjong to substitute the missing one. Nonetheless, due to the rise of technology, HEM can be replaced by machine. About one-third of them considered the second reason of the disappearance of HEM might be no heirs. Since people could not earn much by making HEM, comparing with other industries, no one wants to learn this art