The Golden Child

That pride has been carried by Chinese American immigrants, who have conferred their Ping-Pong dreams on small children. Han Xiao received his first paid lesson, in 1993, from Cheng, a former Chinese national player who had left China for the United States at about the same time as Xiao's parents. Cheng remembers the boy being so short that his head was barely above the table -- the youngster had to swing upward to hit most balls. But Cheng saw a budding talent, a child who had exquisite technique on his backhand, a calm that mirrored Cheng's own impassiveness and, best of all during youth matches, an aptitude for plumbing opponents' weaknesses. "Most kids just hit the ball back," Cheng says. "But Han would hit to the player's backhand, then to player's forehand -- find out what one is weak -- then attack. He was thinking like an adult. That is hard to teach. Han was the best."

The boy was made to order for Cheng's style and demands. "I taught him in Chinese, and he understood," the coach says. "He obeyed. He did his table tennis homework: 300 backhands every night, 300 [forehands], plus 100 doing the jumping rope, three sets. He learned to be very calm when he plays. Being calm is important. Don't show the [opponent] you are angry." He remembers that Xiao played musical instruments for a while: a piano, a flute. There had been a fling with soccer. But then, Cheng adds, just as he had hoped, the boy's interests narrowed in favor of directing nearly all his free time toward table tennis. "Then there was no music, no anything. Just table tennis and school."

The young Xiao believed he had found a sport where he could compete with behemoths. "For Asians, this game is not beyond us in terms of physical prowess," he says. "There are big Asians, obviously, but generally that isn't the case. We're most successful in sports that require a lot of agility and less raw strength -- diving, gymnastics. Agility and power can be developed in table tennis. It's a cerebral game, and composure and discipline make a big difference."

Xiao's direction thrilled his parents. At home, his father pushed his young son to work out and build up his body. "If he had to do something like 500 times jumping rope, and he stopped at 499," Wei recalls, "then he had to start over. He had to build his legs to be stronger than adult legs or big kids' legs, because his legs were shorter. He had to move three steps to [their] one step."

At age 8, Han Xiao captured the American Junior Olympics under-10 cham-pionship, just the start of a series of national titles that would see him win in every age group through his preteen and teenage years. At 15, he earned a spot on the American national team, and, at 16, he won a national doubles title with Cheng. He made several summer trips to Shanghai to train with Chinese players at special camps. Table tennis publications began writing stories about the phenom who was an honor student at Rockville's Richard Montgomery High School and the new American hope in the sport. Xiao grew, became more powerful and, at 5-foot-10 and about 150 pounds, stood taller and slightly broader than most table tennis players. But he fell short of winning American championships in singles competitions.

By then, his father had begun asking himself an unsettling question: What does it mean to be a relatively good table tennis player, even a potential Olympian, if you are living in a country where few people follow the game and even fewer excel at it? Wei wanted greater commitment and better results from his son. About the same time, in an English class, Han had begun reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. He wasn't enchanted by the tale of the beleaguered Santiago, the Cuban fisherman who succeeds in catching a giant marlin, only to fight a futile battle against sharks that tear his prize apart. His teacher, Xiao remembers, hailed Santiago as a symbol of man's perseverance in the face of crushing calamities. But Xiao, who loathed any setback, felt something else. "There was this depressing view in the novel that you're not going to win and that the most honorable thing you can do is go down fighting," he remembers. "That's defeatist. You can have difficulties, but you still have to succeed. That's how I was raised to think."

His father thought that Han shouldn't take satisfaction in reaching anything less than the top. "My dad basically thinks American table tennis is crap and that the U.S. team is so low that you should be up there at No. 1 or 2 in the country," Han Xiao says. "That's a commonly held belief among Chinese parents of young table tennis players. I remember my mom was always proud that I was up in the top [of American rankings]. But my dad usually was talking about what was needed next. He'll say, 'This is what you need to work on' -- instead of, 'This is what you're good at.'"

The years of scrutiny have had an effect on the son. "There's more pressure on me, even when I know he is watching me from a distance," he says. "But if he sits near me, I tend to play worse. If I see his face after I lose a point, it's unnerving. I lose concentration. If I play a bad point, he gets this frown. Or sometimes his eyebrows do this." Han pauses and demonstrates, squinting, knitting his brows. "If I look at him then, it's just terrible."

XIAO'S FATHER IS NOT THERE TO WATCH HIS DEFEAT AT THE HANDS OF QASIM AZIZ, which has come in a preliminary encounter. Should Xiao win the rest of his matches over the next couple of hours, he will meet Aziz in the finals of the league play matches this afternoon. He claims to be unbothered by Aziz's shouts during and after the match. "There's a lot of cho-ing in matches sometimes, and that can lead to trash-talking."

Cho-ing?

It's a Chinese word, a little slang, he says. Cho. "The word doesn't really translate," he says. "It's just a word Chinese players sometimes use when they're pumping themselves up. Dudes will shout, 'Cho.' It's a little like 'come on,' I guess. Sometimes cho-ing escalates into something more. I don't do it, or I seldom do it. It's probably why a lot of people like me here. Asians wouldn't want me trash-talking or kicking over barriers or cursing somebody. Chinese people who like me take sportsmanship seriously. Even the Chinese fans who applaud and cheer for you do it politely; they don't want to do anything that shows up the opponent or an [official]. In China, this one guy threw a tantrum, and he had to publicly apologize, and then they sent him out to work on a farm for a month."

Late that afternoon, the small band of spectators silently reclaims positions on couches and folding chairs for the Xiao-Aziz rematch. Almost all are Asians, and most of them, Chinese Americans. An African American man settles onto a folding chair nearby. "This is major," whispers Morris Jackson, whose son, Marcus, who just turned 15, is a promising junior player and one of the few young African Americans from the Washington metro area competing in the sport. "This is a Chinese sport around here. It's a changing of the guard here [at the club] if someone non-Chinese wins -- or starts consistently beating Han. If Qasim keeps winning, people won't like it. It'd be like if Yao Ming had come down to Southeast Washington, years ago, and started beating people. This is their sport."