French beat Chinese at their own game: mahjong
Allez les bleus! A sweeping victory by France over China at an international mahjong tournament has left the nation that invented the game of tiles in shock.
To complete the European dominance, the three were followed by two Italians and a Dutch player. The best Chinese player ranked only seventh. Among the 108 participants, 13 were Chinese citizens.
News of the national humiliation went viral on Sina Weibo at the weekend. Mostly jocular microblog comments on the humbling defeat were shared tens of thousands of times.
“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."
The French Mahjong Federation was established along with the European Mahjong Association in 2005, 110 years after the sport was first mentioned in a Western book and only seven years after the Chinese State Administration of Sports recognised the ancient game as a national sport. Mahjong had previously been suppressed in China as a form of gambling.
