The Mainland Chinese domination of ping-pong is so complete we even call it by its Chinese name, despite the fact table tennis was invented in the UK. In international competitions, it’s almost all Mainland Chinese at the highest levels. Why Mainland China? Why did they pick ping-pong to be the best at?
Several reasons.
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People in the US think ping-pong is a joke and a child’s game. Very few players in the West develop their skills to the professional Olympian level.
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Because of 1), those players who do compete at the highest level have an extremely small pool of opponents against which they can practice their skill.
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Chinese raise their children in ping-pong camps specifically for the purpose of producing Olympic-level ping-pong players.
It’s really not that surprising. All nations tend to do better that the games their culture values most. That’s why Americans dominate shooting sports, why they cancelled women’s softball, and why you’ll never ever see American football in the Olympics.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
So they value it because they value it?
I can explain why they excel over Western nations, but I can’t explain why they chose that particular sport.
If I missed the intent of your post I apologize.
No problem, but, yes, that kind of was the point of my post.
So, a better way of wording my post might be “Why did the PRC pick ping-pong instead of any other sport you can name?”
Same reason Americans dominate NASCAR - no one else really gives a shit about it.
I read an article a long time ago that whatever international body existed at the time for ping pong competitions was one of the first sporting bodies to recognize the Communist gov’t after the Revolution. Mao was at the time fishing around for some international sporting event to boost China’s national prestige, ping-pong tables were relatively cheap, and the sport already had some popularity in China so he went all in and had the gov’t encourage the Chinese in the sport by having it played in schools and installing tables on military bases, having the state press follow matches, etc.
Several years later, a Chinese player won whatever the big international ping-pong event was at the time. This was the first Chinese victory in any international sporting competition, and since nothing encourages a nation in a sport like beating a bunch of foreigners in it, even more Chinese took up their paddles.
Well, that name long pre-dates the time (early to mid 1960s) when China began to dominate. According to this site, the name was invented in England, in 1901.
There are some others - like Timo Boll (ranked World #1 in 2003).
I don’t think “ping pong” derives from Chinese. It’s just an onomatopoeic (I can’t believe I spelled that right on the first try!) name, from the sound the bouncing ball (or the racket) makes.
From the Wiki on ping pong:
You’ll never see American Football in the Olympics because there is nobody else who plays it. Canada has a similar game, but the rules are substantially different. That’s it. It’d be like having Australian Rules Football in the games.
How about if we just have football in the Games. We play our way, you play yours. See how it works out…
You don’t realize how popular ping pong is in a country of 1.3 billion people. Middle of freaking nowhere peasant ville China will have concrete ping pong tables with a concrete “net” in the elementary school and parks. It’s a cheap sport, doesn’t take a lot of space, and everyone plays it. Layer on top of that a national sport system, and you wonder why the Mainland Chinese dominate?
I still feel sorry for that Malaysian Olympic dude, Lee Chong Wei (who is ethnically Chinese) was ahead but choked at the end. He’s never beaten his Chinese arch rival Lin Dan and Malaysia has never won a gold at the Olympics in any sport. A Malaysian businessman offered a IIRC $1M prize to any Malaysian that won a gold medal.
No, we wonder why they picked that particular sport. Why not something else?
Because there are so many Wings and Wongs, they might Wing the Wong number.
Oops, sorry, I thought this was the Chinese telephone thread.
Most “sports” require a field or indoor, which is a premium to poor peasants.
Badmitton is another one of the sports that the Chinese dominate. It’s another one of those, set 'em up anywhere, doesn’t take any money kinda sports. (Damn, my Malaysia example was for badmitten and not for ping pong. :o )
China was (is) poor country that is over populated and land is at a premium. Sports like ping pong and badmitten, that even most Chinese peasants can afford, are popular. Popular sports in a country with a national sports program and 1.3 billion people should be able to churn out decent teams that compete.
Or are posters looking for something beyond the obvious?
China Guy: All of those are reasonable, but, yes, quite obvious. They also apply just as well to chess, say, which would be just as much of an import as table tennis is, or to darts.
Why did Americans choose to play sports only they play? Why are baseball and american football popular in the US? Why do you call your championships the “world series”?
ETA: I’m not necessarily trying to be a smart ass (although there is a little bit of that). Why I’m posting is that your answers to these questions may help others understand the answers you’re looking for. Also, table tennis is a very popular sport in India too.
China is, in fact, getting better at chess, but countries like Russia have a major head start. Also in China, “regular” chess has to compete with Chinese chess (xiangqi) in terms of popularity.
Darts is not an Olympic sport, so I’m not sure how that’s supposed to compare to table tennis. Now curling is a (winter) Olympic sport, and that’s one of the sports that China has decided to train athletes in. Why? Probably because they figured it’s not that popular worldwide, so there’s less competition.
Eff it, never mind