Smashing day of pingpong in Chinatown bouts
Taking powerful smacks at a whizzing white blur, Avery Chan barely broke a sweat as he made short work of his opponent Sunday inside Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
The 13-year-old Piedmont native’s deadliest weapon is the sidespin serve that he can land just about anywhere on the pingpong table. The vicious serve — along with his quick feet and even quicker paddle — has made him a regional champion in his age group.
Chan, along with other young up-and-coming phenoms, challenged some of the
best players from around the Bay Area over the weekend at the seventh annual San Francisco Chinatown Ping Pong Festival.
“It’s, like, fast-paced, and you have to use your brain and know about what you have to do in the moment,” Chan said of his favorite sport, after dismantling 58-year-old Jeremy Vu.
Vu was no slouch himself. He’s been playing for more than two decades and really started getting serious about the sport two years ago when he began taking private lessons.
But when it comes to dedication, Vu recognized he was outmatched by his younger opponent.
“It all depends on the time you put into it,” he said. “Wait until he has three kids.”
Chan and Vu’s two games-to-11 were among dozens of matches under the white-and-red paper lanterns in the downstairs of the historic brick cathedral, where the clatter of popping balls was barely audible to churchgoers attending morning Mass upstairs.
The venue was one of three locations where players of all skill ranges faced off in the increasingly popular Chinatown event. The lessserious pingpongers competed at tournament sites at nearby Gordon J. Lau Elementary School and Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Recreation Center.
While the event draws some premier talent from around the region, the festival is all in good fun. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee helped start the tournament to build Chinatown community bonds in the style of the pingpong diplomacy President Richard Nixon used to open relations with China in the 1970s.
The mayor even grabbed a paddle himself and played several city dignitaries at a commencement ceremony at Portsmouth Square. Also in attendance were police Chief Bill Scott, Sheriff Vicki Hennessy and Chinese Consul General Luo Linquan.
Back at Old Saint Mary’s, Ava Fu, 13, of Fremont traded points with Sacramento resident Danny Yip, 26.
Fu’s friends from the India Community Center’s Table Tennis Center in Milpitas — one of the prime clubs on the West Coast — cheered her on. The young Milpitas group fielded some of the top players at Sunday’s tournament, and they nonchalantly whupped their older opponents over the course of the day.
Fu said she spends up to four hours a day honing her skills — part of a commitment to a sport in which “you get to travel around the world and make new friends.” She hopes to make it to the Olympics one day.
Her opponent, Yip, said he got into pingpong during his freshman year at UC Davis.
The 26-year-old San Francisco native has since graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and lives in Sacramento, where he got a job in his field. But his taste for pingpong hasn’t waned since college. He still stays close with his club from Davis and travels for tournaments against other club teams at Stanford and UC Berkeley, to name a few.
“It’s pretty awesome,” he said of Sunday’s festival. “It’s definitely a good mix. You have young and old players combined, and a lot of elite players.”