publinero.blogg.se

Tong, or can, is inscribed to indicate a gun barrel. Many people started playing games with the cards. The cards were inscribed with numbers and symbols to indicate the number of sparrows killed. In ancient times, grain house officials awarded bamboo cards to sparrow shooters, who accumulated the cards in exchange for money. One says the word comes from maque, or sparrow, which has a similar pronunciation, and the game derived from shooting sparrows in ancient China. Mahjong’s exact origins remain unknown, but there are a few legends about the popular pastime. “We will definitely work harder and do better in the world championships that will be held next year.” “It has made the news back home because we didn’t do well. “If we won the competition, maybe nobody here would know about it because it’s expected,” he told the media earlier. Yao Xiaolei, assistant to the general secretary of the World Mahjong Organization that selected the Chinese players for this championship, says China’s role as inventor of the game raises expectations among general fans. Jiao Linghua won in 2010 when the tournament was hosted by the Netherlands and his compatriot Duan Yanbin won in 2012. To be fair, China does fairly well at the world championships. China has hosted the event twice - Chengdu in Sichuan Province gaining the honor in 2007 and Chongqing in 2012. The World Mahjong Championship was first held in 2002 in Tokyo, Japan. Since the European Mahjong Association was set up and organized its first championship in the Netherlands in 2005, no Chinese player has finished in the top three although a Chinese team did finish second in Austria in 2009. Only 10 players from China traveled to Strasbourg for the tournament. Players in the event cover their own traveling costs. “But isn’t it also a good thing that Europeans are organizing such large mahjong events and playing so well? And since it’s a European event, there will obviously be more European than Chinese players, so the result kind of makes sense.” “I was surprised when I first saw the news online,” says 63-year-old Chen De, a retired teacher and mahjong fan in Shanghai. Others see it a good thing since it shows aspects of Chinese culture are spreading around the world. Some even consider the results humiliating. They find it unfathomable that the nation which invented the game fared so poorly in an international competition. Many peoples are not even aware mahjong is played in places like Europe. The result has sparked somewhat of a fury among many Chinese, who wonder how foreigners can beat them at the national pastime - a game often synonymous with gambling in the modern age. A Japanese player won the individual competition with a German second.

Team China finished an embarrassing 37th while the top Chinese player, Yan Wenying, was ranked 30th. At the 5th Open European Mahjong Championship two weeks ago in Strasbourg, France, no Chinese ended anywhere near the podium in either the individual or team events. TO many Chinese, the unthinkable and unimaginable just happened.