They could have invented their own Chinese version, but here convention is more useful than innovative design. So they adopted the two.ten/jack/queen/king/ace system, which both introduces more visual flavour into the deck, but is also a convention that’s likely to be known to all players. But this would have left the deck feeling pretty plain and dull. They could have simply numbered the cards 1–13. Here, the relation to playing cards is completely obvious. The highest ranks in Tichu: 10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace
