Apologies in advance for stepping on the “WCIF a nice mah jong set” thread but this one is tweaked slightly different.
I need a vintage mah jong set. Hear me out…please.
(1) I went looking for the place mentioned in this thread on Yanji St. [url]Where can I buy a chess set? - #5 by daniel_han and couldn’t find it – it’s supposedly between Renai and Zhongxiao… sandman mentioned it and gave it high marks. Perhaps it wasn’t open on Sunday. Can anyone get me there a little more precisely?
(2) A nice mah jong set will not do. This one has to be old, as in made somewhere around the time many Forumosans were born or before.
(3) I’ve run this past dozens of people, mostly locals, and the first words out of their mouth are, “What do you want that for?” I’ll get to that in a minute. Apparently, most folks like new sets and when they’re done with the old one, they do what many folks do with shit they’re done with – they throw it out and buy new. OK, fair enough. Somebody on this island has got to be into vintage stuff! Where is it? I’ll go anywhere, island-wide, money is no object, it’s that desperate.
(4) Made a run up to the supposed “flea market” in Tienmu and one of two things happened. Either somebody gave me bad directions (how can you mess up the intersection of Tienmu E/W Rd. and Zhongshan?) or the weather put a damper on the show and nobody came out. I did not see anything that resembled the buying and selling of second-hand goods. This of course could completely be my fault.
(5) You’ve made it this far so I’ll satisfy your curiosity and at the same time, ask another question. Why does this mah jong set have to be vintage? Honestly, I dunno, but I have had three people ask me from home if I could get them one, like, they’ve assumed these things are readily available all over the island. My suspicion is that there was some stupid TV show that featured vintage Taiwanese stuff and that triggered the flux of requests. By and large, people rarely ask me to bring stuff back home. This however is odd. Three people all wanting the same thing that I didn’t even know existed (and may not exist) until they asked for it. Now, in the case of the third individual, this person did me a massive favor and I owe her something. I don’t care if it costs me 20,000NT, the request must be honored. She won’t accept money. Her lone request for payback was…the vintage mah jong set. This individual is a vintage collector of everything. Clothes, records, cars. She’s living in 1945, swear to God. Anyway, my impulse was to tell her what the locals told me but I thought that would be rude. Since she won’t take the money, I said, “Done.”
Thanks for reading. We’ll see what happens. Oh, and actually, I’m also interested in perusing some second-hand shops for kicks, but haven’t found much. Any tips in that direction would also be appreciated.