The Golden Child
You don't have to go to China to find a world where champions are legend, and dreams rise or fall with the bounce of a little ball

By Michael Leahy
Sunday, January 28, 2007

THE OPPONENT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE NET, the one talking to his racquet at this moment, is a nobody in the sport, undertrained, lightly regarded, just the kind of foe that prodigy and Olympic hopeful Han Xiao likes least. "There's nothing to gain and always something to lose for me against that kind of player," Xiao says. A loss here could be a harbinger of trouble, a worrisome crack in his dream to play in the 2008 Olympics. The last thing this idol of the immigrant community wants to do is let anyone down.

Xiao is the sixth-ranked men's table tennis player in the United States -- at 20, a serious contender to win a place on the U.S. Olympic team. There are no table tennis superstars in America -- the best American player is not even in the top 100 in the world rankings -- but Xiao (pronounced "Shao"), who is outside the top 500, still is a big enough deal in the American game to warrant free gear -- today it's a pair of black athletic shorts and a natty blue-and-white polo shirt with his sponsor's logo.

His unranked opponent, 25-year-old Qasim Aziz, has loved this sport since his arrival in the United States from his native Pakistan 11 years ago. Aziz flashed promise in his teenage years, winning a Junior Olympics national championship and regularly beating Xiao when the younger man was still a little kid. But then, while Xiao got bigger and more skilled, Aziz played only sporadically. Between jobs as a homebuilder, he returned to practice and competition in early 2006, though the word "competition" does not seem suited to a match nowadays between him and Xiao. Xiao, who is a full-time student at the University of Maryland, has never been away from the sport since he began playing at 6 1/2. He has spent three of the past four summers training in China, which has the world's best players and the most intensive training regimens.

Xiao is the golden child of the Maryland Table Tennis Center, and this weekend's league tournament barely qualifies as a workout for him. Top prize today is $55, and the runner-up gets his $5 entry fee back. Twenty-two spectators have casually staked out positions to watch.

Twirling a racquet and stretching his lean 5-foot-10 frame, Xiao is imperiously silent; he has been accustomed to attention from small groups since his days as a child phenom. Aziz, in a plain, white T-shirt and casual shorts, is bounding around like a jumping bean and mumbling ferociously at his racquet: "You ready? Come on. You ready?"

Earlier that week, Xiao's coach, Cheng Yinghua, a former American Olympian, bluntly told Aziz that he had no chance of beating his top pupil. "Why play?" Cheng asked Aziz. "You are good, but you cannot beat Han. No chance."

Aziz has worked himself into a frenzy. The match begins, and Aziz takes a quick lead. His small knot of supporters, most of them sitting on a lumpy couch, whoop in whispers.

Early in the first game, Xiao hits a hard topspin backhand onto a corner of the table, the ball skipping and flying 15 feet beyond it, seemingly out of reach. Grunting, the fleet Aziz runs it down and hits a rocket forehand crosscourt that clips the corner of Xiao's side of the table for a clean winner. Xiao's supporters collectively gasp. Several in the Aziz contingent leap.

"That was a bitch-slap," someone mutters approvingly from the Aziz side.

Aziz leaps up and pumps his fist. "How do you like that?" he shouts at the air. "How do you like that? "

Xiao looks at his racquet, expressionless. He hits a serve. Aziz instantly rips back for another forehand winner.

Xiao gazes across the net, his face a blank sky. Aziz is a storm. A variety of gestures accompany his shouts. The finger-point. The fist-pump. The whirly-copter, during which he spins and pumps his left fist one, two, three times. He is hopping and howling at the ceiling now: "What did I say to you? That's right, that's what I said -- that's what you gotta do. You like that? Yeah, you like that." He takes a swig out of a plastic water jug and yells at his racquet. "Come on."

Aziz's dominance grows over the next few minutes, with Xiao weakly hitting a backhand into the net. First game to Aziz, 11-6.

"You see that?" Aziz exults. "You see that? Come on." The Aziz supporters excitedly slap hands. The Xiao loyalists quietly look on, stunned.

The best-of-five-game match continues on this same improbable trajectory. Aziz is hitting killer forehands, happily shouting at the air, hopping perilously close to Xiao on the table's side. A few minutes later, the match is over. Aziz has won three of the four games, finishing with a flourish, a forehand that Xiao barely gets his racquet on.

Grinning, Aziz shouts at Cheng: "You still think I can't beat him? What do you say now? What are you saying now? I told you I could beat him. See? I told you. He's not that big of a player. How do you like that?"

Sixty feet away, Cheng pauses from his lesson to glance up and smile at Aziz. Then, in the next instant, he has retrained his attention on his work. The moment is not nearly dramatic enough for Aziz, who looks back at Han Xiao and gives him a pat on the back. Xiao smiles and nods, his head bowed ever so slightly. All this good-natured courtesy seems to dampen Aziz's sense of vindication -- no one looks at all humbled. He walks away from the table, accepting congratulations from his brother and friends, then sending a last shot Cheng's way: "I told you I'd beat him. Didn't I tell you?"

By then, Xiao has walked off, finding himself a quiet place at the other end of the club where he sits and mulls over what has just happened. Unconsciously, he begins biting his fingernails ravenously. "I played lousy," he declares. It is no way to begin an afternoon in which he hoped to sharpen his strokes and build his confidence, which, of late, has been starting to slip.

IN THE LATE 1980S, WHEN HE WAS A TODDLER, Han Xiao's parents left him behind in China for a couple of years, so that they could build a new life in the United States for themselves and their son. Jobs in the scientific and technical fields were scarce in China at the time, his parents remember, and the Chinese government generally looked the other way when young people who attended American universities quietly chose not to return to the homeland. In his parents' absence, Han lived with grandparents in the city of Nanjing. In time, his parents received graduate degrees in America -- his father in chemistry, his mother in biochemistry -- and with secure incomes and their lives stabilized, they sent for him. Han was 2 1/2.

He was precocious, reading books before he entered school; he bypassed kindergarten altogether. His parents wanted him -- and later his younger sister -- to be steeped in two cultures, and made a point of speaking only Chinese to him in their home. Leisure time was limited. If his father spotted him watching a few minutes of television, he'd often ask Han why he wasn't doing anything productive. The boy revered the work ethic of his father, a computer database administrator for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. If there was a shared recreational pleasure, it came upon a kitchen table fashioned into a Ping-Pong surface. Wei Xiao and his wife, Grace Zheng, played the game as schoolchildren in China, and they enjoyed gently batting a table tennis ball back and forth. Their young son joined in; the family eventually invested in a cheap $100 table.

In the early '90s, while reading a Chinese newspaper published in Washington, his father noticed an advertisement for table tennis lessons at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. "I just wanted Han to have a sport and exercise," Wei Xiao remembers. "It was nothing serious. I liked the game when I was a boy, and everybody I knew in China liked the game. Everybody played in China. I thought he might like the game, too."

As Wei Xiao saw it, table tennis also offered another way for his son to forge a connection with his culture and homeland, which treasured its long success in the sport and viewed the game as ideal for building fitness and character.

Table tennis historians generally agree that the game didn't come to China and other Asian countries until the 1910s, or a couple of decades after Britons and Americans began playing it, in some cases by using rounded wine corks for balls and cigar box lids for paddles. But by the early 1960s, China dominated the sport, in large part because its poverty and scant athletic facilities had made Ping-Pong one of the few games that the citizenry -- old and young, rich and poor -- could afford to play.

The Chinese government made a cause out of Ping-Pong excellence. Major tournaments there drew crowds in excess of 10,000. Fans' fervor fueled the growth there of a premier table tennis league; teams lured foreign talent to join homegrown standouts, with the matches televised throughout China. During the last four Olympics, China won 14 of 16 gold medals awarded in table tennis. The sport's top players enjoy rock star status in the country.

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."

The players appear, and the match begins. The issue is decided within a few minutes. Xiao's best shot, his quick backhand that he hits while the ball is still rising, is flawless. His shots hit deep in the corners, confounding Aziz, whose potent forehand is suddenly a beat late and errant. Xiao wins the first seven points of the match and takes the first game, 11-1.

The onlookers remain subdued as the steamrolling resumes in the second game. The backhand is the weaker of Aziz's two sides, and Xiao exploits it.

"Come on -- you're missing that ball," Aziz screams at himself.

In about 20 minutes, the players are shaking hands. Xiao has won in a three-game trouncing. Order has been restored, at least temporarily.

Xiao picks up his $55 winner's share and packs his gear. He attributes the early loss to a simple lapse of concentration in a meaningless club match. The big matches, he says, are ahead of him, particularly a major tournament, in Baltimore, that will feature high-ranking players from around the world, including those from two Chinese universities. "I'll be ready for that," he says.

But he knows that others, hearing about that loss to an unheralded player, will wonder whether he is doing nearly enough to prepare for the Olympic Trials, particularly veteran table tennis observers who have been urging him to leave college for a while, so he can do nothing but train. Friends regularly remind him how great it would be to go through the rest of his life saying that he had gone to the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

But he wonders how much time he can set aside for that level of training, given his academic responsibilities. How can he do it? And at what cost?

PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT LINK IN XIAO'S OLYMPIC DREAM IS CHENG YINGHUA, the man who once had the same dream for himself. A familiar name within the cloistered world of American table tennis, Cheng is best known for his decade-long stint as a member of the celebrated Chinese national table tennis team. Ranked in his best days among the world's top 30 players, his career has included triumphs against several of the sport's luminaries, including its Zeus, Sweden's Jan-Ove Waldner, often referred to as the Michael Jordan of the sport. The upset victories surprised some observers, though not Cheng. "My training was good, sometimes better than some players'," he says matter-of-factly. "It should be. It was in China."

But all his accomplishments masked a personal disappointment: Cheng never ascended to the top ranks of China's table tennis program; instead, he was passed over during his prime in favor of stars regarded by Chinese coaches as having games better suited for defeating an array of international playing styles. He never competed in an Olympics for China. Reduced to being largely a glorified sparring partner on the national team, and tasked with imitating the playing styles of foreign opponents likely to face the Chinese champions, Cheng became expert at mimicking the strokes and serves of formidable European foes -- including the magical Waldner.

"Cheng may have been the greatest player never to win a world championship . . ." says Larry Hodges, the editor of USA Table Tennis Magazine and a part-time coach at the Maryland Table Tennis Center. "He was beating the best players in the world, but he wasn't allowed to play enough major tournaments to achieve a high world ranking."

Cheng expresses no bitterness over his career in China. "Many good players played [there], but then I come here, and everything is good," he says. He prides himself on an easy acceptance of things, a stoic calm. "It isn't good to be mad; nothing to be mad about," he says. "And nothing good can happen in anything if you are mad."

By the late '80s, with the Chinese government's permission, Cheng immigrated to the United States. Over the next two decades, he would gain American citizenship, win four national singles championships and, in 2000, capture what had eluded him in China, a spot on an Olympic team. Competing for the United States in singles and doubles, he was defeated in the competition's opening rounds. But back home in his adopted Maryland, his Ping-Pong lessons had grown in popularity at the club he co-founded. Aided by a burgeoning roster of students at the Maryland Table Tennis Center, in Gaithersburg, and by his frequent table tennis camps, his income dwarfed anything he ever made in China, putting him solidly in America's upper-middle class, like the Xiaos. "America is good for business," the 48-year-old Cheng says today. "Good chances here."

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.