The Tiles

A mahjong set consists of 144 tiles.   Three-quarters of these (102) are divided into 3 suits.  The remaining 36 are honour tiles (dragons and winds) and bonus tiles (flowers and seasons).  The Chinese names for these subsets are standardized, but the English translations vary.  Shown below are the most commonly understood English names. 

Suits do not mix; that is, a run of 3 (chow) must consist of sequentially-numbered tiles from a single suit, and a triplet (pung) must consist of identical tiles from a single suit.

Collectively dragons and winds are referred to as honours.   The three types of dragon are red, white, and green.  The winds are East, South, West, and North which is the order in which they are typically listed.  A player must collect these in pairs, triplets, or quads of identical tiles.

The tiles with Arabic numerals are flowers.  Those numbered in Chinese are seasons.  Collectively they are referred to as bonus tiles.  None of these are used in the construction of a hand:  their function is related only to scoring.  The players can agree to play the game with or without the bonus tiles,

Another feature of this particular set is the absence of English hints on the tiles in the form of numbers and letters (E, S, W, N).  The illustration above provides translations for those tiles likely to cause confusion, and may be printed for use as a cheat sheet during play.