The four gentlemen and the four seasons
The flower tiles show the "four gentlemen" of Chinese painting — plum blossom, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo — plants long used as symbols of a cultivated character. The season tiles show spring, summer, autumn and winter. Each set of four is numbered one to four, and the numbers line up with the seats: one for East, two for South, three for West, four for North.
Some sets illustrate the seasons with scenes of farming or fishing rather than plants, and decorative sets often add extra bonus tiles. The essential point is the number in the corner.
How bonus tiles work in Chinese styles
In Hong Kong and most Chinese games, a flower or season is never kept in the hand. When you draw one, you place it face up in front of you and draw a replacement tile from the end of the wall. If you hold one in your opening hand, you do the same at the start.
Scoring varies by table, but a typical Hong Kong rule gives a point (faan) for each bonus tile matching your seat number, a bonus if you have no flowers at all, and a larger bonus for collecting all four of a set. Collecting all eight is a limit hand at many tables.
American flowers
American Mah Jongg treats all eight bonus tiles as identical "flowers". Unlike in Chinese play, flowers are part of the hand: they appear as required tiles in many card hands, can be passed during the Charleston, and can be used in groups with jokers. There is no set-aside-and-replace rule.
That difference catches out players who switch between styles. If you learned Hong Kong style, remember that in American play a drawn flower stays in your rack — and may be exactly what your hand needs.
Riichi and the missing flowers
Japanese riichi mahjong removes flowers and seasons altogether, using 136 tiles. Its bonus system instead uses dora indicators and red fives, which reward particular tiles in the hand rather than drawing extra pieces. Some Japanese house rules add flowers back in, but competitive play does not.
Competition Chinese rules (MCR) keep the flowers but give them very little weight: each counts a single bonus point that cannot help meet the eight-point minimum. That approach recognises flowers as tradition while stopping them from deciding games.
