The French won gold, silver, and bronze at the European Mahjong Association’s French MCR Championship in Toulouse, France on May 18-19. Italians finished fourth and fifth. A Dutch player finished sixth.

The Chinese, who invented mahjong, only had two players place in the top 13 — Yang Zhang and Cao Lihua finished 7th and 8th, respectively.

What gives?

“Some of them have practiced at mahjong competitions for a longer time even than the Chinese citizens have played mahjong for fun,” Yao Xiaolei, assistant to the secretary general of the World Mahjong Organization, told Global Times. “Some of them” being Europeans, of course.

Also:

He added that some top Chinese mahjong players could not make it to France this time and the jet lag also created distractions.

Or could it be that the Chinese are simply too proud to play mahjong professionally?

Zhao Jisheng, an associate professor at the College of Sports at Beijing Normal University, gave another explanation for the failure. “Anyone trying to excel at mahjong will be regarded as an idler in China, which makes it difficult to organize a professional mahjong team,” said Zhao.

We’ll conveniently ignore, for a second, the massive mahjong tournaments — some lasting up to three months — hosted in China. Seriously, what gives? Look at that above picture and tell me it’s not the shame of this nation! There were 13 Chinese players in the 108-person field, and all of them can expect their citizenship to be revoked.

The “national humiliation” has been a popular topic on Sina Weibo, reports SCMP.

“We cannot let foreign devils beat us,” one person commented.

“As a person from Chongqing, I feel the nation needs me now,” said a resident of the city known to produce talented mahjong players.

Some cited the national athem. “As the Chinese people have arrived at their most perilous time,” they wrote. “Every person is forced to expel his very last cry.”

Sigh. At least this country still has ping-pong. And thank God for badminton, where Team China just swept Korea to retain the Sudirman Cup. Thank God for that.

French mahjong team beat China at its game (Global Times)
French beat Chinese at their own game: mahjong (SCMP)

The best mahjong players from around the world, representing 13 countries, have converged in Chongqing for a four-day tournament that ends later today. According to Sina:

The first Eight sessions will determine the team and country rank. For these sessions, efforts will be made to ensure that players from different countries will have an opportunity to face each other. For the Ninth, and Tenth sessions, the players with the highest scores will be grouped together. The final rankings will use the cumulative scores from all ten sessions.

The keys to winning are “focus, patience, and knowing when to and not to chase after the big pot,” says BJC contributor Alicia, our go-to expert on all things mahjong. There is also “offense,” “defense,” and “psychology — learning how to read your opponents,” apparently. So there you have it: Zol zayn mit mazel, mahjong competitors. More pictures after the jump.

The World Series of Poker can move aside now. The three-month 2012 Sichuan Mahjong Competition ended on Saturday with Jing Daiju, a 33-year-old woman, winning 200,000 yuan. Runner-up Wang Chao, a 24-year-old woman, took home 50,000 yuan. Organized by the Chengdu Chess and Card Association, the event drew more than 300,000 participants, including online players. “Mahjong is the symbol of the laid-back lifestyle of Chengdu,” association director Shi Tefan told China Daily.

How does one win such a massive mahjong tournament? “It’s basically up to luck,” one participant said, as quoted in Guangming Net. BJC’s Alicia, who “loves” playing mahjong, insists it’s “strategy, like chess.” Let’s call it a combination of both and leave it at that. Being a dice player myself (forthcoming: “a primer on how to play Chinese liar’s dice, and be awesome at it like me”), I’ll just slowly back away from this topic.

[Image via Ministry of Tofu]