中, 發 and the soap

What it means

中 is zhōng, the centre; read zhòng, it is a hit on the mark. It is painted red, and American players call the tile the red dragon.

發 is fā, from 發財, to prosper or to come into money. It is painted green: the green dragon.

白 is bái, white. On most sets the tile carries no character at all, only an engraved frame around a blank face, or nothing but the face itself. American players call it the soap, because a blank, framed tile looks like a bar of soap. On the card it is also the zero where a hand needs one.

The color-blind mode adds the words RED, GREEN and WHITE to these three tiles and to nothing else, since their shapes already tell them apart.

Where the history is uncertain

The word dragon is not a translation of anything on the tiles. The usual story is that it came in with the export sets of the 1920s, when the three honours needed an English name; no one is sure who first used it.

The tiles, one by one

Screen 4 of 9 in What's on the tile.

A historian's review of the history on these screens is pending.

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