Meet the mahjong pop-up bringing Vancouver’s young people to the table

It’s Halloween night at IKEA Richmond, and amidst the usual clatter of shopping carts and flat-packed furniture, the sound of shuffling tiles and laughter cuts through. Tucked away in the corner of the cafeteria, a bustling crowd of people in their twenties and thirties is snacking on meatballs and playing mahjong—the classic, Chinese tile-based game.

This is Dragon Tile Social Club (DTSC), a pop-up mahjong social club founded last year by university friends Gregory Kuntjoro and Owen Chong. Both had recently finished school and were navigating what they describe as a familiar post-grad loneliness when they reconnected at a mutual friend’s birthday party. From there, things started to form organically.

“We found out that we live really close to each other, so we were like, ‘hey, let’s go out for lunch,’” Chong explains. “We wanted to combine our friends and do something fun, and what better way to do that than mahjong, which is a game that we played in our childhood and sort of grew up with.”

Each invited eight friends from their respective friend groups, and just like that, the first iteration of DTSC was born: four tables squeezed into Kuntjoro’s living room and a snack bar stocked with Vitasoys and Asian snacks.

Since then, what began as a casual living-room gathering has evolved into a roaming social club building community in unexpected places: think art galleries, popular cafes and, on Halloween night, IKEA.

“I think in Vancouver, there isn’t really a social club for mahjong that specifically caters towards the younger demographic, and that’s what sets us apart,” says Kuntjoro. “We want to put our club in places where Gen Z and millennials would want to hang out, even if there wasn’t any mahjong there.”

“Our approach to mahjong is that it’s made for young people and it’s made for you to socialize,” Chong adds. “It just makes me so happy that I get to share my culture with people who like to play.”

Attendees seem to agree.

First-timers and regulars fill the space, volunteers buzz around beginner tables and the occasional passing shopper stops to check out the festive corner.

Volunteers point to how rare it is to find a low-barrier third space in the city.

“Mahjong is inherently social, and I don’t think the barrier to entry is that high,” says DTSC volunteer and recent college graduate Jing Wong.“You do need to know how to read 1 to 10 in Chinese, but it’s really just ten symbols you have to remember.”

“I’ve met so many different people that I probably wouldn’t have met in my day-to-day life, and I still stay connected to a lot of them,” adds Nina Osoro, another volunteer who resonates with the club’s community-building goals.