The three pips are usually shown as a diagonal, except on the double three dominoes, where the spots are laid out as two horizontal, two vertical and two horizontal groupings. Unlike Western dominoes, there are no blank tiles in Chinese sets. The Western set has 28 tiles in the standard double six set while the Chinese set has 32 tiles. The ranking, name, coloring and arrangement of pips of Chinese dominoes is based on tradition. The better quality Western dominoes have a spinner in the middle of their dividing bar.
Chinese dominoes are always flat faced.
They are mixed in the same manner as Western dominoes, but while Western games leave the tiles loosely spread on the table top in a boneyard, Chinese games build a woodpile by stacking the dominoes in a row to a height which varies from game to game. The first player gets the stack determined by the dice and then each player takes the next one in line. There are traditional pairs that have names and rankings, much like the names that we assign to dice throws.