缘分, yuan fen, is the Chinese word meaning ”fate or chance that brings people together, destiny”, which perfectly describes our design journey. Our friendship began with a very direct question from Daniel when we first met in studio “Are you Chinese?” Tommy was born in China then immigrated to Sweden at the age of 14, and Daniel is an “ABC”, meaning “American born Chinese”, exchanged from the North Carolina State University of the United States. Both of us share the same cultural heritage, yet view many things through different perspectives. Through early research and many conversations, we quickly discovered our shared interest in the modern renaissance of Chinese culture through western lenses. What are the things inside our culture that we appreciate the most, and how can we extract that and manifest them together with western aesthetics? MAJIANG is our answer.

The name MAJIANG for the table set comes from our last names Ma 马 and Jiang 姜. When we combine them together as MaJiang, it is a homophone for 麻将, which better known by its alternative spelling, Mah-jong, a traditional Chinese tile-based game that requires skill, strategy, and luck to form winning combinations and outscore opponents.

Just like Majiang, our design process and many other things in life also require skill, strategy and luck. Sometimes one can have a more significant impact than the others, but all is needed to have the best outcome. We hope that through our design you can get inspired and invoke some curiosity of the culture and the wisdom from the far east. Yuan Fen not only succeeded in bringing us to Lund from two opposite sides of the Earth, and completed this project, but also brought you here. Thank you for reading and hopefully, we will meet again.