Paddling against the mainstream
US players of Chinese ancestry making mark on world stage
Whenever Grant Li wins a table tennis match at a collegiate tournament in the United States the victory, for his friends, is taken for granted.
“They will be like ‘of course you should play ping-pong and win, you are Chinese’,” Li, who was born in the US to a Chinese immigrant family, told China Daily during the men’s singles qualification at the 2015 World Table Tennis Championships on Sunday.
Despite the sport’s niche status in US colleges, where American football, baseball and basketball dominate, Li is proud of his choice to focus on a sport which is massively popular in his parents’ home country.
“Yes, I do feel more connected with the sport emotionally than my American peers because of the Chinese descent in my family,” said the junior student who majors in finance at the University of Southern California.
Li practices three times a week at school club Ping Pong Posse and plays in the National Collegiate Table Tennis Association, which includes more than 150 universities in North America.
Apart from Li, the sevenmember US national contingent in Suzhou also boasts four other players with Chinese ancestry, including Amy Wang, the youngest athlete at the tournament.
The 12-year-old, who is shy in front of the media, showed aggressiveness way beyond her age at the ping-pong table, reminding many of a mini-version of Deng Yaping, the four-time Olympic gold medalist and one of the greatest female paddler China has produced.
Outsized by her opponents in women’s singles’ qualification, Wang claimed two victories during the threematch group stage but failed to make it to the main draw.
“It’s my first time playing at such a big tournament. I did feel nervous in close points but I try to always focus on the next point, not to panic,” said Wang, who was introduced to ping-pong by her father at the age of four.
Thanks to their parents’ sense of national pride, more and more children born to Chinese immigrant families in the US have been encouraged to pick up ping-pong bats.
At the 2014 Nanjing Youth Olympics, Lily Zhang, from California, whose father played table tennis with a team in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, became
14-year-old Diaz carries on family tradition
the first American to win a table tennis medal at an Olympic competition after claiming the women’s singles bronze in August.
US national team coach Lily Yip, a former Guangdong provincial champion who now runs a table tennis training center in New Jersey, still gets emotional about the younger Lily’s breakthrough; even eight months after the YOG.
“I started as a waitress in a restaurant and had nothing to do with the sport after moving to America (in the 1980s). I am a witness to table tennis rising to a certain level of participation from obscurity. I am really excited to see our next generation carry on the tradition,” said Yip, who now focuses on nurturing the much younger Wang at her training center.
In addition to her afterschool daily practice, Wang’s father drives her to Yip’s center on a 90-minute ride for intensive training every weekend to nurture his daughter’s growing passion for the sport.
Still a small franchise compared to those nearby of tennis and golf, Yip’s center has seen more than 300 trainees sign up since it started in 2005.
Li and Wang now have set their sights set on representing the US at the Olympic Games and challenge China’s dominance.
More importantly, the game has given them a sense of accomplishment, which helps them stay confident in the mainstream US culture which promotes sporting excellence.
“Ping-pong is not popular in America but playing it gives me confidence in school knowing that I am good at something and it carries me around the world like a vehicle,” said Li.