Crow had the great and amazing pleasure of spending two years in the 1960's in Taiwan doing anthropological fieldwork. During the 60's and 70's he traveled widely in the Orient including Macao, the Ryuku Islands, two visits to Japan, one to mainland China, and many visits and many weeks spent in Hong Kong. He was and is deeply fascinated by things Oriental.

In Hong Kong and Taiwan he became familiar with Mah Jongg as a very popular game and gambling sport* and later learned of its popularity in the U.S. in the 20's and 30's as a kind of exotic card game played with delicious ivory and bone tiles.

Imagine his amazement a few years ago to come across the book and deck by Derek Walters, The Fortune Teller's Mah Jongg, The Ancient Game as a Modern Oracle, 1988, Eddison Sadd Editions Ltd., London. (Now out of print but occasionally available in the Viking Penguin, 1994 edition.) Walters is a leading scholar of Chinese metaphysics who has also written with depth and beauty about their systems of astrology and Feng Shui.

By the time he rediscovered Mah Jongg, Bekki had already trained Crow in the Tarot and he often joined her doing readings at events and taking clients at Dragon Waters. However, using the Mah Jongg as a divinatory tool resonated perfectly with Crow and his deep empathy for the systems of Oriental philosophy upon which it is founded. He immediately threw himself into working with Walter's deck to learn the system.

Since then Crow has done literally hundreds of Mah Jongg readings; he works with almost no other system because he finds this one so accurate for a wide range of problems, and the information and guidance it provides proves to be very satisfactory for his personal use and for the vast majority of his clients.

*Crow's introduction to Hong Kong and the Orient happened simultaneously with his introduction to Mah Jongg. His first night in Hong Kong was spent in an older Chinese hotel in Kowloon. His room was on an air-shaft and all night long, up and down the shaft the only thing to be heard was the rattle and slap of Mah Jongg tiles and the squabbling of the players.