The popular game of mahjong is played with mahjong tiles or sometimes cards that feature similar content. In the past they were made with bone and often had a bamboo spine; however, modern game pieces are often made from a variety of plastic materials such as celluloid, bakelite, and a newer version of mosaic is being constructed using nylon. In some very rare cases, you can even find versions made from ivory or jade.

In a basic mahjong set there are 144 game pieces that have 36 different types of pieces (four of each) that make up 3 suits (suit tiles) ranging from one to nine, plus there are four directional pieces that show this, west, north and south

In addition to all other mahjong tiles, there are 3 (honor tiles) named Red Dragon, Green Dragon, and White Dragon, referred to as Cardinal card.

The 3 suits mentioned above feature bamboo 1-9, characters 1-9, and dots 1-9.

So, at the risk of confusing the situation, there are also optional tiles called flowers and seasonal that are different from the suit and honor mentioned above. There are eight in all and they feature the orchid, bamboo, chrysanthemum and plum. The season is made up of the farmer, the scholar, the lumberjack and finally the fisherman.

So, to recap and get the total count:

There are 27 suits, plus 4 directionals, plus 3 honor, times 4 (each), which equals 136 plus the 8 optional flower and season tiles for a total of 144.

Before the game starts, all 144 mahjong tiles are completely shuffled and placed face down on the table, each player will select 36 tiles (if no optional seasonal flowers are used then 34) and place them face down to form a wall of 18 tiles. tile (17 if no optional and seasonal flowers) that is 2 tiles high, then each player will push their wall to meet the walls of the other three players to form a hollow square in the middle of the table.