Mike, the Chinese characters are 南方 (Nan Fang), meaning South, Southern, South Direction, etc., depending on context. It translates to "Southern Club" in this case. These are the most modern characters. Chinese was historically written in calligraphy form, and there are many ways to write those characters, some very stylish and barely recognizable vs. today's proper written form.

Some of the chips were made with older stylished character versions of the words 南方. This is why you cannot get google translate to recognize it. Google only understands modern form.

南方 is pronounced "Nan Fang" in Mandarin, which is the official dialect of mainland China. "Nam Fong" is in Cantonese dialect (Hong Kong, Guangdong, & other southern regions).

MF is indeed a mystery. There are no Chinese dialects that would pronounce the character 南 starting with an "M." Perhaps in Korean or Japanese (they use Chinese characters too), but that's beyond my scope. My take is that it's simply an error. Either the Chinese guy in charge of ordering the hotstamp didn't know how to translate the character into pinyin (English pronunciation), or the American guy in charge of it did not know how to translate it, or there was a miscommunication somehow. Sometimes, the simplest explanation is the right one.

It should be NF.

Hope this helps.