VENICE - Bo Lang, the current European mahjong champion, is invited to play in the Open European Mahjong Championship 2011 after all. Initially, she could not play since the organizing Italian mahjong federation FIMJ had forgotten to give her a wildcard. Bo Lang is delighted about the late invitation: “This is indeed good news”, she tells Mahjong News. “I am thrilled to participate at the OEMC 2011 in Mestre now me and Hwa can both play.”

One seat

Bo Lang is born in the Philippines, but she has the Swiss nationality. Since Switzerland is not a member-country of the EMA, the Swiss quota for the OEMC2011 was determined to just one.
Not until an article about the matter was published in Mahjong News and on the official OEMC-website, Bo Lang realized that she would have to qualify. She got really mad about this. As the runner-up in the OEMC2005, after the Japanese winner Koji Idota, she was laureated as the official European champion, and she refused to fight for qualification against her friend Mei Hwa Felder (the only other Swiss mahjong player). Bo was of the opinion that Switzerland ought to have allotted an extra seat because of her championship.

Regrets

The FIMJ regretted not to have invited Bo Lang in the first place, but since all the official quotas for the OEMC2011 had already been approved by the European Mahjong Association, there was no way to invite her anymore. It could not be corrected with a wildcard. Not until it would become clear that a seat from another country would come free.

It was Slovakian player Andreas Riha who saved the Swiss delegation. Slovakia is a EMA member-country, but, according to Andreas, there is not much interest in the OEMC since most Slovakian players prefer riichi mahjong. “We will gladly give away one OEMC-seat”, Andreas wrote Mahjong News.

This was all FIMJ-president Marco Milandri needed to know. He did not want to make the two ‘Swiss maids’ wait any longer. As soon as the Slovakian offer was made formal, he sent an e-mail to Bo Lang, stating: ‘The Slovakian association will use only one of the two seats available and so the OEMC staff has decided to invite the current European champion Bo Lang. I hope that Bo will participate at OEMC 2011.’
Bo Lang did not have to think twice.

United Kingdom

There is still a similar problem with the British delegation. The UK is not yet an official member-country, so it also has a right on just one seat. But there are two strong British players, Johannes Scott-Weijers and Chris Redmond, who both think they have a right to play in Venice without qualification.