The Golden Child

Good opportunities perhaps, but aside from a small group of cultish fans, Ping-Pong in the United States never has been more than a parlor game on the order of bumper pool and air hockey. "I think part of his reward now comes in seeing his [students] develop and become good players," Xiao says. "I think that is part of the reason why it's important to him that I do well and have a good chance to make the Olympic team. If I succeed, it's a victory for him, too. It's been that way since the beginning with us."

He is flattered when spectators tell him how much he reminds them of Cheng. "A lot of people think we look alike and that our games are similar," he says. "We both have good backhands. Our personalities are alike when we play, the calmness. I think I'm naturally that way, but he's probably had some effect on me. His impact isn't only on your game. The biggest thing Cheng does is what he does when I'm doing something like talking about my dad -- he makes you see things through other people's eyes. I've learned from him. For someone who didn't receive a lot of education, he is very wise."

For his part, Cheng says that he doesn't have a real interest in making the 2008 Olympic team as a player, that all his hopes are vested in Xiao. "I did the Olympics before," Cheng says, insisting that his best days are behind him. "Now I think [mostly] about getting Han to the Olympics. It would mean a lot to the other players here: young players, old players, everybody. Han is the one."

Cheng is one of those urging Xiao to take at least a semester off from school to train full time in China, in preparation for the U.S. Olympic Trials. But coach and student haven't talked much to each other about Cheng's own plans for 2008. Despite what Cheng says about this being Xiao's time, Xiao believes his coach may become an Olympic rival himself. "I think Cheng would like that -- having everybody think he hasn't trained much and keep the expectations about him low, so there's nothing to lose," Xiao observes, smiling. "Then he goes in there and beats everybody with his experience and his mind. That's Cheng. He'd like that."

There will be only three or four Olympic positions available, and the survivors of the Olympic Trials must compete again before ultimately landing spots on the U.S. Olympic squad headed to the Beijing Games. Cheng's entrance into the field would make an already stiff challenge for Xiao that much stiffer.

Cheng can still play. He won the U.S. national championship in 2004, his fourth U.S. title. In 2005, his fourth-place finish in the nationals landed him one spot ahead of his pupil. The two have played each other only twice, but Cheng won both matches, most recently this past spring, in a best-of-seven match, when Cheng dispatched Xiao in four straight games, befuddling him with spins and changes of pace. Xiao's parents were distraught afterward. Even Cheng was mystified over why his student had played so feebly. "Why did you not fight?" Cheng demanded.

Xiao just shrugged.

"I know him, and he knows me," Xiao said to his mother later. "It's hard to fight."

His mother understood. "Cheng is his model," she says softly, to which her husband adds: "Cheng told me that Han could beat him if he tried his best. But I don't know about that. It's hard mentally for Han. Hard for any student to beat the coach. And Cheng's experience: Maybe it's too much. I don't know what would happen if they played in the [Olympic] Trials. It might be hard for Han. It might always be hard."

THE NEXT SATURDAY, XIAO GETS READY TO PLAY IN THE POTOMAC OPEN TABLE TENNIS TOURNAMENT, at the Potomac Community Center. He is the top-ranked contestant among the 32 entrants and has arrived in his black competition shorts and a black-and-cream polo shirt from his then-sponsor, Butterfly, which produces Ping-Pong equipment. Seeing the Butterfly logo on his shirt, a couple of junior players point excitedly, in the way young basketball fans might at a hoops star wearing the shoes of an iconic company. "Ooooh, Butterfly," one boy says.

"Han Xiao," the other adds.

Sitting in a folding chair is Morris Jackson, who is part of a small group of African Americans here. Qasim Aziz is here, too. Jackson enjoys watching Aziz's zeal. "Qasim is good for table tennis," he says. "A lot of energy and personality there. People like to watch him. It's a great sport that we have, but we need people from all groups to expand it. It's great to have immigrants, but it would also be great to have more African Americans; it would be great to have more whites from here, Latinos, everybody." Jackson's son, Marcus, recently became the first African American to make the USA Table Tennis Association's national boys 14-and-under team.

But, nowadays, immigrants constitute the American face of the sport in its elite ranks. The country's top-ranked singles player, Ilija Lupulesku, is a former Yugoslav national who won a 1988 Olympic silver medal in men's doubles for his homeland. A Vietnamese immigrant, Khoa Nguyen, won a spot alongside Lupulesku on the 2004 U.S. Olympic team. Indian Americans and other Asians are climbing the sport's junior ranks.

Chinese American immigrants have won most of the U.S. national championships since the early 1990s. Only one native-born American player, a 21-year-old Indiana-bred star named Mark Hazinski, is a fixture among the nation's best players. Hazinski, who was home-schooled during his youth to accommodate his training and tournament schedules and nowadays attends Texas Wesleyan University on a table tennis scholarship, has played twice in the national men's finals.

Jackson believes that the passion of many local Chinese Americans for the sport adds to the weight of expectations upon Xiao and Cheng Yinghua. "The Chinese [Americans] expect their players to win," Jackson says. "That's pressure. For Cheng, it's very important that Han Xiao does well because Cheng has coached him forever. Han is Cheng, you know? It's really going to be bad for Cheng if somebody starts beating Han, because then people might say, 'Well, Cheng can't be that great of a coach if Han is getting beaten, and so maybe I should take a look at some other coaches.' Table tennis is a small community. People hear. So they know: Han got beat in a match. He's vulnerable. And that's a whole new thing, really."

Xiao must begin his day by facing a 14-year-old named Kevin Ma, a boy he knows, a huge underdog who is just one of several players here whose coach is Cheng. The kid is smiling sheepishly, honored and giddy to be playing Xiao, with whom he has practiced at the Maryland Table Tennis Center.

Xiao doesn't relish playing young opponents. They usually have nothing to lose against him and, as a result, he thinks, tend to play far more relaxed and aggressively. Ma wins the first game in their best-of-seven contest, banging forehands that a perturbed Xiao keeps netting.

The knot of spectators grows as word spreads that Kevin Ma is presenting problems for Xiao in their second game, as well. Watching the action from a discreet distance is Wei Xiao, wincing as his son hits one errant backhand after another.

But just when disaster begins feeling like a real possibility, Xiao's shots start finding their range. He takes game two, his quickening backhand producing a rash of errors from his young opponent. Hitting a rocket backhand to close out the match, Xiao walks off, head down. He finds a seat in the corner of the gym. His father follows, bending over the chair and giving his son advice in Chinese. His son doesn't meet his stare but looks toward some Ping-Pong tables, and nods now and then. The father turns and walks back to the officials' table.

"I told him, 'Play every player the same, not just the championship opponent,'" Wei Xiao says. "But he's getting older, and it's harder to tell him things. He thinks, at this stage, he knows. But sometimes you need parents to tell you."

In the quarterfinals, Han Xiao meets another boy under Cheng Yinghua's tutelage, 14-year-old Peter Li, whom some regard as having the potential to become the next Han. The boy's proud father, Ming Li, cannot help smiling even as his son is being soundly beaten. It is a privilege, he says, for his ambitious son -- a straight-A student in Laurel's Hammond Middle School and a member of the national boys 14-and-under team -- simply to play Han Xiao. "Han is the big star . . ." the elder Li says. "He went to China to train, and so my [son] and a lot of kids go to China to train." By now, Xiao is something more than himself -- at once a player and a potent symbol. "We all root for him to make the Olympics," adds Ming Li, who rushes over to shake Xiao's hand after his son's defeat. Xiao smiles politely, fielding more compliments from more beaming parents, shaking more hands, then hurrying off to rest. Ahead is another encounter with Qasim Aziz.

Their match turns out to be the easiest of the day for Xiao. With all the speed and spins that he employs in his strokes -- topspins, underspins, sidespins -- the orange ball is a blur, darting like a hummingbird. A subdued Aziz, who has come off a tough seven-game semifinal and complains of shoulder stiffness, has nothing left for Xiao, who swiftly takes him apart in four straight games. Along the way, Xiao allows himself a big fist pump and a one quick triumphant shout -- " Eiiiiiiiiii" -- late in the final game.

He and his father leave together. On the way home, his father delivers his assessment of the day: Han was not in top form.

Even though his father made a point of staying out of his line of sight, Han says, "I saw him. Once or twice his eyes narrowed, and he frowned after I hit a bad shot."

But the day is over. He has two weeks to get ready for the big Baltimore tournament, which he hasn't had time to begin focusing on, fretting about school papers he needs to write. He chuckles. "Some people, though, will be thinking about it every day," he says. "The Chinese will be thinking about it every day. They'll be working out every day."

He laughs, wearily.

ON TUESDAY AND THURSDAY AFTERNOONS DURING THE FALL SEMESTER, Xiao can be found in Room 1121 of the University of Maryland's Computer Science Instructional Center. He is a teaching assistant for Computer Science 311, also known as "Computer Organization." He lectures, he grades homework assignments and quizzes, he answers the questions of baffled students, and he has office hours.

Well-prepared and just smart-alecky enough, he is a popular teaching assistant, far better known here as a techie than as an athlete. It has come as a surprise to some of the students to learn of his table tennis successes.

At the end of class, the course lecturer, Michelle Hugue, asks whether she can do anything for him during December, when he will be out of town at a tournament. "I don't know how he does all the things he does," she says. "And how he makes each thing look like it's the most important thing. You couldn't have a better TA. If I worry about anything with him, it's whether he has enough time for himself. I said to him the other day, 'Han, go have a life.' "

Ordinarily, he would be getting paid $10 an hour in the TA job, except that he flunked a computer science course as a freshman when he missed a month's worth of classes while overseas at the table tennis world championships, and the university won't pay any TA who has flunked a course in his major. He has never told his parents about the F; instead, he told them at the time that he simply wanted to retake the computer science course because he had received a bad grade in it, knowing full well that they would assume a bad grade meant a B. He then earned an A in the course, but that didn't change his mind about telling them the full story.

All his life, expectations of Xiao have followed on the heels of his successes. He says that his 11-year-old sister, Lydia, faces some of the same pressures. "But I think the expectations will always be greater for me, because, in Chinese culture, the first child, especially a son, is the pride of the family," he says. He pauses to think about that, chewing on those fingernails bitten down to nubs. "It's very important for the first son to be successful," he says. "It's important to have realistic goals and fulfill them. Asian parents are comfortable with me as a [role model] for their kids, because they see me as practical. They wouldn't want their kids to emulate somebody who said he was going to play table tennis professionally, because that's just not a realistic way to make a living. But, at the same time, it's important to do well at anything you try. There aren't excuses allowed . . . I've been trying to focus on my expectations. My mom taught me that a long time ago. If you focus too much on other people's expectations, it kind of takes away from your own passion."

Now he is off to eat a quick dinner in the student union. He is no star on campus. He plays table tennis for Maryland, but the game is not an NCAA sport, known, instead, as a "club sport," which means few students even know it exists. For a while, Xiao even kept his Ping-Pong success from his roommate, Mike Agamir, a fellow computer science major who shares a passion with Xiao for video games.

"He's cool, but I don't see him much," Agamir says. "I ask him if he can hang out on weekends, and the answer is always pretty much the same: He has to go home and practice table tennis."

Next Xiao hurries over to a gym on campus to work out with his teammates on the college table tennis squad. Their errors are frequent, their strokes don't have much spin, and their serves don't move like knuckleballs -- all a reminder of the training disadvantages for an American college student aspiring to make the Olympics.

ON THE WEEKEND BEFORE THANKSGIVING, THE XIAO FAMILY RECEIVES A CALL FROM CHINESE OFFICIALS: Would they be willing to host a few athletes from the East China University of Science and Technology who will be competing in the table tennis tournament in Baltimore?

The Xiaos say yes, and, on that Sunday night, the athletes arrive, staying for the next several days at the Xiaos' house in Germantown. Among them is a 26-year-old left-hander who splits his time between Shanghai, where East China University is based, and Vancouver, British Columbia, where he coaches young Canadian table tennis players while getting ready to play in his own tournaments. His name is Han Xiao, which is a source of great amusement to the mother of Han Xiao from Germantown. "When our Han went to China to train," Grace Zheng says, "he worked out with the other Han Xiao." She giggles. "The other Han is older, so I call him 'Big Han.' "

On Tuesday night, she throws a party for the athletes. Now and then, her son chats in fluent Chinese with a few of his guests, as his namesake from Shanghai quietly listens. The two Hans last saw each other this past summer in Shanghai, where they played against each other in training. At the end of the summer, the American Han Xiao felt that he had performed reasonably well in sessions with the Chinese players. He has told friends that he acquired a much better understanding of the styles of a few Chinese players -- an insight that can only help, he thinks, if he ever finds himself playing them in real matches.

Shanghai's Han Xiao finishes noodles and chicken prepared by Grace Zheng and pronounces the feast "delicious," in perfect English. Told that Grace calls him "Big Han," he laughs. He pulls up a T-shirt beneath his team sweats to reveal a roll of flesh around his waist. "Not Big Han," he says. "Fat Han."

"Big Han" is also a misnomer because, as he points out, at 5-foot-7, he is a few inches shorter than the American Han.

He once hoped to play on China's national team, but that dream proved impossible, along with his goal of making the country's Olympic team. "There are too many great players in China," he says. Besides playing on a much-respected Chinese provincial team, he has competed in Germany's foremost table tennis league and beaten several players ranked in the world's top 50, he says. "But, a few years ago, I realized that I wasn't ever going to make the national team, so I joined the university [team]," he says. "And I've trained a lot over in Shanghai, and that was where I met him." He points across the room at Han of Germantown.

His analysis of the American Han is swift and unflinching. "He hits a great backhand shot, but he misses easy shots. His [forehand] has mistakes. He doesn't return a serve well. He doesn't have good footwork. He's not quick, and he doesn't set up well for a shot. He hits with his arm too much because of his footwork problem. Doesn't use his body enough in his shots. So he makes many errors. American and Canadian players have similar problems. They like to go for the big shot too much. They are not patient enough. And they don't practice enough."

He is asked whether Han can make the American Olympic team.

"Maybe. I don't know all the players."

Could good Chinese players make the American team?

He looks around. "Of course."

Would Han ever be able to make the Chinese team?

"No, I don't think so. No chance. He would need 100 times more practice to be competitive. It's complex there. You have different practice partners for different styles. It's completely different."

THE NIGHT BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Han Xiao returns to the Potomac Community Center to participate in a table tennis exhibition featuring members of another visiting Chinese team, this one from Beijing University. The emcee introduces an exhibition doubles match pitting Cheng Yinghua and Jack Huang -- another Maryland Table Tennis Center coach formerly from the Chinese team -- against a Beijing doubles team that features 56-year-old Liang Geliang, a renowned former world champion for whom Cheng long served as a training partner.

Chinese photographers who accompanied the Beijing athletes to the United States swarm around the aging legends, jostling for position. Liang dutifully poses, experienced in the role of sports idol. Chinese Americans have packed the community center's bleachers, and the crowd of about 500 heartily applauds during the match when the four players step back from the table to hit long smashes and towering lobs. At the match's end, the photographers run again toward Liang and Cheng. The frenzy is a revelation for the mesmerized Han Xiao. "It's the first time I'd ever seen anything like that happen for table tennis players," he says later. "It's like they had groupies around them."

He watches as spectators flock from the stands and push past him to rush these legends of the game.

DURING THE LAST SATURDAY IN NOVEMBER, Xiao stands alongside his father in the mammoth Baltimore Convention Center, waiting his turn to play in the 2006 STIGA North American Teams Championships. It's the biggest table tennis tournament on the continent, involving more than 1,000 players and 220 teams playing at various times on 144 tables.

Nearly all the major American players, aside from No. 1 Ilija Lupulesku, have come to the event, along with several top 100 players from around the world. Xiao is part of a four-man team sponsored by the New York Athletic Club and featuring two notable names in the sport: five-time national singles champion and two-time American Olympian David Zhuang -- who left China for New Jersey in 1990 -- and a highly touted German player named Thomas Keinath, currently ranked 74th in the world. Their team is among 24 in their division. The competition calls for the members of rival teams to square off against each other in singles matches. Teams with the most match victories advance to the next round. The championship team will receive $7,000, the second-place team $3,000, and each of the losing semifinalist teams $1,200.

Late in the morning, in a best-of-five-game match, Xiao meets a 52-year-old immigrant from China named Li Yu Xiang, a 2006 World Seniors Champion who is competing for a team dubbed "New York International." Xiao has never beaten Li. The players split the first two games. Grace Zheng sits close to the table, while Wei Xiao has planted himself atop bleachers, 25 yards away from the action.

Li concentrates on hitting balls to Xiao's forehand. But, as the match progresses, he makes the mistake of hitting balls too short, and Xiao rips topspin forehands and backhands for winners. Xiao scorches a backhand for another point, overpowering Li on his way to winning the match, three games to one.

By the day's end, his New York Athletic Club team is one of eight to have moved on to Sunday. The East China team will advance, too, though the day has been rough at times for Shanghai's Han Xiao, a loser to the pudgy and balding former world champion Liang Geliang, who has baffled his younger, faster, stronger opponent. "He is an older, defensive player, and for some reason I have problems with that kind of player . . ." Xiao says serenely. "It is old-generation table tennis. There are so many styles in China. It's hard to learn how to play against all of them."

On Sunday, the two Han Xiaos watch as their teams win another round and advance to meet each other in the semi-finals. In an improbable pairing, Han Xiao will face Han Xiao. The American Xiao needs to win to keep alive his team's chance for victory.

About 1,000 spectators have gathered to watch the match. Disdaining the distant bleachers, Wei Xiao now takes a seat alongside his wife. Off to the side, in a folding chair, sits Coach Cheng Yinghua. "Ladies and gentlemen, the only thing I know is that Han Xiao will win the next match," says the public address announcer to a smattering of laughs.

Wei Xiao's son hits a forehand into the net on the first point.

China's Xiao pumps his fist and cries, "Cho!"

Over the next 25 minutes, the spectators witness a rout. The left-hander who has dubbed himself "Fat Han" hits whatever shots he wants for winners -- long balls, short balls, forehands, backhands -- though what he enjoys doing most is returning a ball so quickly, with so much pace and spin, that the American has no time to think, no time to do anything but weakly tap the ball back to him. Then the wide-bodied dominator nimbly turns and smashes the next ball away with a flourish. His dancing serve is faster and trickier than anything his namesake has glimpsed in a long while. The American Xiao loses a flood of points.

It occurs to him that this other Han has improved immensely since they last hit together in Shanghai -- doubtless the product of months of uninterrupted training. After being overwhelmed in the first two games, the American Han walks to the team bench with his arms outstretched, in a gesture of unalloyed helplessness. The Han Xiao he wishes to be as a player is on the other side of the net. Wei Xiao looks over at his son. His wince and frown have given way to a vacant stare.

"I didn't even notice my father," Han Xiao will say later. "I was too busy being confused. It was pretty awful."

The match is over in the next 10 minutes, a four-game sweep for the Chinese veteran. The afternoon gets worse for the American Xiao: Cheng walks over to tell his protege that he played terribly -- that the rhythm and pace of his shots were awful. "Cheng said I looked clueless out there," Xiao says later. "I was clueless. I had nothing. I wasn't prepared for anything like this. It's a different pace, a different game. Cheng said I looked bad in front of a lot of people. He's my coach, so I guess he didn't like that."

A measure of consolation comes then from an unusual source. Wei Xiao walks over to his dazed son, bends and whispers to him, gently touching his shoulder. He tells friends in the crowd that his son played his best and fought hard to the end. "The difference is that the Chinese, even the university players, get support for playing," he says. "They are professionals. Han only gets a few hours a week. He needs more time. But what he doesn't need is more pressure. Everything is up to him now. The Olympics. Training. Everything. He's been doing this a long time, since he was a little boy. If it is fun, it doesn't matter whether he wins or loses. If it isn't fun, then it's no good. I only want him to be happy."

Michael Leahy is a Washington Post staff writer. He will be fielding questions about this article Monday at 3 p.m.