Thanks to Ray Heaton we have today’s posting and the wonderful Flowers pictured above. Read on…

The 5th European international mahjong competition takes place next month and a set of flowers has been produced to commemorate it. Here’s a graphic of the tiles from the China Majiang web site, http://www.chinamajiang.com/info/showinfo.asp?id=1009.

I think the Chinese have managed to misspell (in Chinese characters) the Eiffel Tower. They have named the tile 挨菲尔铢塔. Unfortunately this should be 艾菲尔铁塔, i.e. the first character is wrong. The pronunciation is almost the same for this character, 挨, “Ai”, though the tonal inflexion is different to the correct one, 艾 (also “Ai”).

The other three are Notre Dame, Mont St Michel and Pont Du Gard (all spelled correctly!)

Under the Cockerel, the Chinese words are literally, “The French National Chicken” (though I’m sure there’d be a better way to translate them!) and under the one dot it says “Strasbourg European Parliament” (the event is in Strasbourg, but at the Parc de l’Orangerie).

Also under the Cockerel is1条, 1 Tiao, 1 String.
And under the one dot is1筒, 1 Tong (Tong here being the character for Thick section of bamboo)

The bottom row are of course the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.

See the tiles here too, http://www.ventdestmahjong.fr/OEMC2014/EN/jeu.php, where you can see the locations for all the tiles imagery.

Make sure you check out these videos at http://www.ventdestmahjong.fr/OEMC2014/EN/jeu.php – this is fascinating stuff!

And again, much thanks to Ray Heaton!