One of the most beautiful things about Crazy Rich Asians is how it refuses to explain many of its most intrinsically Asian elements. That lack of training wheels is intentional: As director Jon M. Chu told me, "We didn't want to give people an excuse to think of this world as some kind of obscure, exotic fantasyland -- this is a real place, with real culture, history and tradition, and instead of just giving them answers to their questions, we want them to have conversations."
The movie's Singapore-specific local color and broadly Asian cultural nuances are indeed fairly Google-able, and can readily be contextualized through polite discussions with actual Asian people. But there's one scene in particular that has been resiliently enigmatic to audiences of many backgrounds, both Asian and non-Asian... and it's a pivotal one: The mahjong scene.
That's especially true for fans of the book, who won't recognize it -- it's original to the movie. It was inserted in part because Michelle Yeoh, who delivers an amazing steel-and-silk performance as the movie's main antagonist, refused to play the stock, villainous tiger mom from the book. This scene provides her with critical impetus toward her eventual redemption.
But it's also true for people who don't understand the complex rules of the game, which aren't intuitive and are often different depending on region of the world. So here's a quick primer on the game of mahjong itself, as well as its significance to the film in that pivotal scene. Spoilers abound starting here, so if you haven't yet watched the deliriously warm and funny movie, crawl out from under that rock and see it before reading further.
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