By Philip Yeung
Contrary to belief among the Chinese, ping pong, or table tennis, was not invented in China. It was, in fact, invented in England at the end of the 19th century when partygoers discovered that they could play a game over a dinner table, with a champagne cork as the ball.
The game was first called whiff whaff, but when the ball was changed from cork to celluloid, the sound it made changed, and so did the name of the game. Ping Pong mimicked the new sound made on the paddle.
At first, the ping-pong sound was considered insulting to the Chinese and was later given a harmlessly generic name--table tennis. Since then, the game has never been safe from Chinese players.
China might not have invented the game, but it has practically colonized it. Throughout its history, the physically unadventurous Chinese were not known for inventing sports or games, except, of course, mahjong, in keeping with their risk-averse nature. For the domesticated Chinese, there is no game more suitable than four people seated at a table, testing their luck or tempting fate.
Ping pong owes its popularity in large part to its household setting, and that, unlike golf, it requires no expensive equipment. All you need is a ball, a table, a paddle, and a make-shift net. It is a game made for the masses.
Then, historical accidents added another dimension to the game. Ping pong diplomacy was instrumental in thawing frosty relations between China and the US and returning China to the international arena.
Overnight, American and Chinese ping pong players became household heroes on two continents. Ever since, this little ball has loomed large in the Chinese national psyche, including in the latest edition of the World Table Tennis Championships in London.
Significantly, this is the 100th anniversary of the WTTF World Championship, and table tennis has come home to its birthplace. But it was not the home team that triumphed, as China swept both the men's and women's team trophies.
The Chinese players played their hearts out in one nail-biting match after another. The thrills and spills of this fast-action game, played at reflex speed, kept a nation of 1.4 billion out of bed and on the edge of their seats. They lived and died with each shot.
Liang Jing-Kun, an underrated player, rose to the big occasion, twice making a comeback from the brink of extinction, twice from two games down in five-game matches to eke out a hard-won victory that helps China clinch the world team title for the 24th time, and 12 times consecutively.
Liang is now immortal. He will forever live in our collective memory as the ultimate never-say-die player, displaying a gritty spirit emblematic of the nation. He proves that to win, an unbreakable spirit trumps sheer skills.
This championship has two heroes: Wang Chuqin and Liang Jing-Kun—the former as the solid anchor of Team China, the other the unlikely come-from-behind artist who has saved the nation's honor to give China its ball-playing bragging rights.
It proves that in sport, as in life, you can't beat someone who, with every cell in his body, refuses to give up, no matter what.
For years to come, players from other competing nations will conduct postmortems to pin down the secret of how a teetering player or a team can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, again and again.
The humble little ping pong is not just a game. It dwells deep in Chinese hearts with its great pinging spirit.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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