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Chloe Loung

In Hong Kong’s bustling Central district, the pedestrian-only Shin Hing Street is a popular haven known for its wide staircase and its many great bars and restaurants. Now, one of the neighbourhood’s most beloved streets is getting its own visual identity over three days in May, courtesy of 33-year-old Daniel Wu, also known as Mr Mahjong.
Starting from May 29, the 15 shops that hug the steps will each display a one-of-a-kind mahjong tile-inspired artwork on their facades.
The project is the first outdoor “exhibition” by Wu – @mmj_HK on Instagram – after spending the past few years turning the traditional 144-tile game into a unique canvas for Hong Kong stories.
Wu is a civil engineering graduate from the University of Hong Kong who unexpectedly ended up following an artistic path. While at university, having any “creative output” felt like a distant world, he says, but he started “messing around” to test how far a mahjong tile design could be bent before it was no longer seen as a proper mahjong piece.
That idle curiosity became an obsession when he realised that the blank faces and simple iconography of the tiles could be repurposed into almost anything, from Cantonese wordplay to personal names and miniature street scenes.

“I’m actually a terrible mahjong player,” Wu confesses with a grin. The spark was purely visual. “I was just drawn to the design of each one. I looked at them and thought, ‘I really want to make something out of those.’ You can do almost anything with a tile.”
The real significance of the traditional tile-based game lies in its power to connect different generations, Wu says. Growing up, he struggled to connect with older relatives in conversation. Yet, around a mahjong table, they would open up.
“It wasn’t just a game,” he says. “It was the one place where the generation gap disappeared.”
Early on, Wu decided to ask local artisans to turn his designs into actual mahjong tiles to give to friends. Then, the tiles took off on social media and being “Mr Mahjong” has become a career, with exhibitions in art galleries and Soho House, as well as collaborations with major brands such as Hang Seng Bank, Gucci, Van Cleef & Arpels, Red Bull and Yohji Yamamoto.
Most recently, Wu custom-designed two exclusive, themed mahjong sets for actors Colin Farrell and Fala Chen to use in the 2025 Netflix psychological thriller Ballad of a Small Player, a film heavily steeped in the high-stakes gambling dens of Macau and Hong Kong.
This open-air street exhibition, however, is extra special among his other projects.
“I come to this street all the time,” Wu says. “There’s nowhere else like this in Hong Kong. You buy a coffee here, wine there, but people don’t come to drink coffee or get drunk; they sit on the stairs and talk.
“It’s its own little neighbourhood, and the atmosphere feels exactly like a mahjong table – a place where people connect.”

The Shin Hing Street art exhibition features more than 100 specially designed mahjong tiles outside the shops and scattered across the area. They are all designed under an overarching theme that pays homage to the street’s name: shin, meaning kindness in Cantonese, and hing, meaning celebration.
Visitors can find his works installed at eye level underneath the signs of each store, deliberately designed to be touched as well as seen. Smaller hidden installations, tucked around corners and alcoves, wait to be discovered like Easter eggs.
Before starting the design process, Wu approached every shopkeeper to learn the quirks of their business. “For the Mexican-inspired cocktail bar Coa downstairs, I knew right away I wanted agave leaves,” Wu says.
That alchemy – taking something foreign and reimagining it through a form so deeply Chinese – is where he finds both his greatest joy and challenge.
He shares that one of his most challenging commissions came from Kyanbasu by Mt Yotei, the lamb-specialist izakaya, or casual Japanese pub, at one end of the street.
“How do I combine a sheep, a Japanese drinking den and mahjong?” he asks. He eventually settled on the “one bamboo” tile, which traditionally depicts a sparrow in standard mahjong sets, and transformed it into a lamb.


“I thought about it for ages,” Wu says. “That’s the beauty of this exhibition: each piece only happened because I sat down with the owner and listened. They represent the shops fully, but they also represent me and my culture.”
Other creative translations include a floral tile set inspired by La Cabane’s natural wines, a sushi and sake-themed set for Sakaba Masaka and a geometric design based on EN Coffee’s logo. A few doors down, an eye-catching piece for the craft-beer outlet Out of the Brew features a rocket design made up of a few mahjong tiles displayed together.
“The shop’s logo is a rocket – and at first, I didn’t know how to tie it back to classic mahjong tiles because it felt too far from tradition,” Wu admits. “But then I realised I had to keep a true ‘one circle’ tile design, so that when people see it, they instantly know: this is a mahjong tile, not just street art.”
Mr Mahjong’s outdoor exhibition opens on Shin Hing Street, Central, from May 29 to 31, 2026. For details, visit mmj.com.hk.


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Daniel Wu, aka Mr Mahjong, is a Hong Kong-based contemporary artist and designer focused on traditional mahjong culture. His first outdoor “exhibition” takes over a street in Hong Kong. Photo: Sun Yeung

The Shin Hing Street project is the first outdoor “exhibition” by Daniel Wu. Photo: Sun Yeung

Wu’s sets are displayed as shown, placed underneath each store’s sign, on Shin Hing Street. Photo: Daniel Wu

Wu’s design for Mexican-inspired cocktail bar Coa. Photo: Daniel Wu

Wu’s design for lamb-specialist izakaya ⁠Kyanbasu by Mt Yotei. Photo: Daniel Wu

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Chiang Wai-yuen (right) and his father, Chiang Biu. The elder Chiang and several business partners opened Snow Garden in North Point’s City Garden in the 1980s. Photo: Snow Garden

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Daniel Wu, a self-professed terrible mahjong player, takes pieces from the traditional tile-based game and carves ‘almost anything’ on them


Daniel Wu, a self-professed terrible mahjong player, takes pieces from the traditional tile-based game and carves ‘almost anything’ on them.


How Mr Mahjong is telling Hong Kong stories through his one-of-a-kind outdoor exhibition

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Daniel Wu, a self-professed terrible mahjong player, takes pieces from the traditional tile-based game and carves ‘almost anything’ on them

Daniel Wu, a self-professed terrible mahjong player, takes pieces from the traditional tile-based game and carves ‘almost anything’ on them