China still dominates the world at table tennis and its supremacy is unlikely to be challenged at the Olympics, but the seeds of a decline may already have been sown in the parks and playgrounds of Beijing.
For many Chinese like 72-year-old retiree Xu Tianwu, table tennis is more than a game. It is the national sport that brought glory to China from as early as the 1950s and even played a major role in international relations during the ping pong diplomacy period of the 1970s.
National team members are lionized, and former stars like Olympic and world champion Deng Yaping are household names.
PHOTO: AP
“The reason so many Chinese consider our table tennis players to be heroes is because they bring honor and glory to China,” Xu said.
“For me, ping pong keeps me happy and healthy,” he said as he played his daily three-hour stint at one of the tables found in every Beijing park,” he said. “I hope I’ll still be playing when I am 80.”
However, not far from the park where Xu plays his daily ping pong marathon, others are enjoying a different, more edgy experience in the Dongdan open-air basketball ground just east of central Tiananmen Square.
“Basketball lights up my life, it’s the only fun for me and I play as much as I can,” said Zhao Chao, 18, who says he puts in at least an hour on the court each day.
Image matters to younger Chinese — and table tennis is seen more and more as the game of an older generation who had no other leisure choices.
The British-born game was imported into China in the early 20th century and became so popular that many Chinese believe that it is their own invention along with gunpowder and printing.
“Ping pong expresses the dexterity, speed and agility of the Chinese,” Xu said.
Easy to learn and cheap to play, the sport gained a wide following after the founding of communist China in 1949. It brought China its first taste of international sporting glory with a world title in 1959.
Under strongman Mao Zedong, table tennis was a diplomatic tool for a rapprochement with Washington.
In 1971, Mao invited the US table tennis team to China for a series of friendly matches that ended a lengthy period of enmity and set the wheels in motion for the 1979 normalization of US-China ties.
Table tennis has to face up to some serious challenges, including the younger generation’s growing affluence and their taste for other sports.
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