Not your basement Ping Pong
BEIJING -- I’m staring at a statue of an ancient Chinese man behind a ping pong table. "Want to play?" an actual man asks, handing me a paddle.
Against a statue? Well, I serve. And the statue, holding a paddle with the top facing down, hits it back. I run off to the side, nearly falling on my face for a return. Statue hits it back again.
(Sun-Times file)
I run backward, then off to the backhand side, nearly eating the black metal fence, and then charge forward unable to stop before ramming the table. Statue keeps returning, changing spins and directions like no hunk of granite I’ve seen before. It slices to the forehand side, where the ball’s path makes left-handed turns as if going around in a circle. I am running as fast as I can, but can’t get there. I did avoid smashing my nose on the ground.
"Heh, heh," the statue says.
HE’S ALIVE!
This is Beijing, a little taste of the daily life, the ground floor of what brought the Olympics here in the first place. You know how the playgrounds around Chicago have people playing pickup basketball games? They play pickup ping pong in Beijing.
It’s the national game, and there are little parks everywhere in the city, some just taking up half a sidewalk for a block, or out in a little village. The open spaces all have a table, or people swatting badminton birdies with nets.
In fact, across the street is a sidewalk space with a family having fun on a table with a hard plastic net. Also, it has a bunch of odd public workout equipment. A giant wheel that people spin for whatever reason. Some posts hold a young man hanging upside down.
A sign reads, "Human Body is a complex construct, the function conditions of which will change while exercising."
Understand, they’ve put up a signs everywhere for the Olympics to translate things into English. Sometimes, it’s not quite right. One sign over a nearby restaurant read: "Meat Patty. Explode the Stomach."
But back to the ping pong park, where 200-300 people come every day, starting at 5 a.m. to watch, play, just hang out. It’s behind a building next to Workers Stadium, the old national soccer stadium not far from the Forbidden City.
Hyuan Shui Shen, a retired chemical plant worker, the ancient statue, says he’s 60, a nice, round claim for a man of at least 147. His glasses droop, he’s balding, wearing gray, droopy pants and an Adidas shirt.
"He says he’s the best one here," says Violet Law, my interpreter, a journalist in Beijing who went to the University of Chicago.
That’s right. He’s taunting me. Some things are universal.
People are starting to walk up from outside the fence, out by the Chinese restaurant with red lamps. I am a curiosity, tall with blond hair and no game.
There are five tables, all taken. Along a back wall are two chess tables with several old people sitting on stumps hovering over the pieces. Large tree trunks with hooks sticking out run through this tiny park.
People walk in like they do a YMCA for hoops, but they hang ping pong bags on trees or the fence, and put a large water bottle, with tea leaves, on the ground. Two old men without shirts play on one table. Next to mine is four young men playing doubles, whaling away seriously from eight feet behind the table.
This can’t be the game we play in our basements.
Statue is humiliating me. So I decide to fire up, Come on, come on. I’m on my toes. "Here we go."
"Heh-heh," statue says.
He comes for an hour every day. He edges past me, 11-4, barely paying attention while asking Violet whether she’s married. I think he’s throwing points to be nice.
On the next court, the doubles is finished, and Fu Chao, 31 and athletic looking, is having a cigarette.
Do all your friends play ping pong?
"Most of them do know how to play," he said through Violet. "Some of my friends play, but don’t play too well."
China played the U.S. in baseball the other day, and the crowd would go nuts over popups and soft liners. They didn’t quite understand.
At the pingpong venues, they go crazy, athletes are cocky, kissing the ball, and fans are almost taunting. The American team, like most, is made up of Chinese players who didn’t make it in China. The Chinese men and women have already won team golds. Individuals are up. China will win.
So the guy with the cigarette says he has never seen anyone play with my skills. Actually, Violet asked whether he had seen anyone play as poorly as I do.
"Um, no," he said, in perfect English.
I think something was lost in translation.
"Heh-heh," the statue said, overhearing.
A few courts over, Chao Chiu Shen, 61, a retired munitions worker said he plays to stay fit. He has come nearly every day since the place opened 10 years ago. Before retiring, he played at work. Workplaces here have tables.
Ping pong is the way China connected to the Western world in the early 1970s, with ping pong diplomacy when the U.S. team was allowed to visit. China threw games to the U.S. back then, too. Barriers to the West broke down. Without that starting point, the Olympics wouldn’t be here now.
Behind the tables, a kid maybe 3 years old draws in the dirt with a stick, absorbing everything. I’m sure I could beat him now.
"Heh, heh."