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Ping-Pong? That's So Old China.
Nearly every park or school in China features a ping-pong table. This man was playing last week at a public park in Beijing.
(By Natalie Behring -- Bloomberg News)
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"There's a large and solid ping-pong player base in China, and that's why we keep the crown year after year," Shi said. "This won't change -- ping-pong is true to its name as a national pastime."
Players on the Chinese Olympic team are not unbeatable. During the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, South Korean Ryu Seung-min defeated China's Wang Hao to win the gold medal in the men's singles competition. But this year the Chinese have home-court advantage, and expectations are high.
"I still like to watch the sports that China is good at," said Zeng Qixiang, 68, a retired factory worker who watched China defeat Greece in the men's competition on Wednesday. "China is good at small balls, like badminton, ping-pong and tennis, not big balls."
For Zeng and others, the game continues to hold a treasured place in this country because there is so much history behind it. Just because the Chinese are now enamored of a hurdler doesn't mean they can't like ping-pong, too.
"Nowadays, people play many other kinds of sports," said Li Jinjing, 28, a producer with CCTV, the state broadcaster. "But it doesn't mean that ping-pong can be replaced. China has 5,000 years of history, and after all this time, China is still irreplaceable."
As China's women's team clobbered Croatia and the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, the spotlight was elsewhere. China was being mesmerized by three waifish girls who would go on to capture gold for this country in team gymnastics.
"We always win all the ping-pong games -- there's no suspense," said Li Sufan, 24, a middle school teacher leaving the China-Croatia game with her brother. "My students prefer to play basketball -- for them, it's a symbol of coolness."
Researchers Liu Liu and Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
