SWAMPSCOTT — For some, playing mahjong is about more than winning a game, and if you ask Amy O’Connor, it’s about connecting with the community around you.
O’Connor has spearheaded a fun, new initiative to teach mahjong to anyone who’s interested. She explained what compelled her to teach others and inspire a sense of community in her pupils.
“I have been playing for about 20 years. … When I was a new mother, I remember my mother’s group were all sitting around a pool and talking about things we wanted to do and learn, and I brought up mahjong. It reminded me of my youth and being at the pool,” O’Connor said.
She recalled how a friend first taught her how to play the game, which spawned a weekly game for her friend group. O’Connor also spends her summers golfing — and as the summers came to an end, they started racking their brains of activities to tackle during the winter months.
O’Connor, already a pro at the game, had the perfect solution to keep the group going.
“Somebody was like, ‘Oh, I would love to learn mahjong,’ and I thought, ‘I can do that,’” O’Connor explained.
From there, she began instructing the group on the mechanics of the game.
“I had taught others in the past, but this was the first formal way that I got into teaching it, and one of them loved the game so much that she’s now teaching others herself,” she said.
She continued, saying that her friends encouraged her to grow the incentive into something bigger.
“They were all really encouraging, and I thought, ‘This is the time,’” she said. “All of the sudden, I started to see things exploding on the news, there was a whole bunch of studies about mahjong and cognitive maintenance.”
The first thing she did was to talk to other mahjong teachers around the area in order to try and gauge the best path forward. She became a guild member with a website called Mahjlife.com, which she said had “great resources and a great community of teachers.”
She explained why she thought the incentive presented a unique opportunity for community members.
“There are lots of women and people who teach others, but not a lot of teachers. … After talking to some people that are well-known in the teachers’ space, I got all of my teaching tools together and made it official,” she said.
O’Connor shaped the format of her lessons so that anyone — first-timers to veterans of the game — can hop in to polish their skills and connect with others along the way.
“It goes step-by-step, and it takes you from knowing nothing to being a confident player. … One of the things I hear a lot is, ‘I know how to play because I’ve played online. Why would anybody need a teacher?’” she recalled. “Even though it’s called mahjong and used with mahjong tiles, it really has nothing to do with mahjong — it’s far more complicated than that.”
She added that her favorite strategy going into teaching newcomers is having a set of four classes two hours each. The first class covers understanding the mechanics of the game; the second goes into rudimentary games, followed by guided-play throughout the third and fourth classes.
“It’s really exciting. Right now, my partner and I are running a program through the Swampscott Recreation Department,” O’Connor said. “We teamed up with Mexacali (the restaurant in Vinnin Square) who gave us space, and we had 20 people who signed up in less than a day. … It’s really social, it’s a great opportunity to sit around a table with three other people and have several hours together.”
She continued, saying that for most people who join, the focus is also on the social connection element of the game.
“It’s a way to be with the people you want to be with, to do an activity that keeps your brain moving. … I looked around at the class and thought, ‘This is really the start of something in Swampscott,’” O’Connor said.
O’Connor also has similar classes booked in areas like Chelsea and Reading.
“It’s a game that really spans different generations. … For me, I’m looking for ways in life to enjoy my time with the people around me, and post-COVID, I think a lot of people are feeling that way,” O’Connor said. “It seems like we’re all pretty distracted by our phones and social media, and this is an immediate way to socialize in a way that’s old-fashioned, but I think it’s what people crave.”
For anyone interested in learning more or signing up for O’Connor’s classes, use this link: mahjlife.com/instructor-guild-directory/name/amy-oconnor/.
