Ping-pong with Procson
The Chinese are wise enough to recognize ping-pong as bloodsport. Nearly every night, ping-pong matches are on national TV. Arenas are jammed with thousands of rabid fans, eyeballs racing left-right-left-right, trained on the fluorescent orange sphere as it races back and forth at supersonic speeds.
The players look like Nas cars, every inch of torso used to advertise cigarettes or the latest kung-fu movie or, in some cases, Coca-Cola. They play four or five feet back from the table, exchanging torrid fastballs and mixing in the occasional splitter, a curve, maybe a change-up every sixth hit.
As American TV covers every crunching hit in football as if you’re the one with the pads on, so too does Chinese TV cover ping-pong. After every point, an instant, slo-mo replay shows you what your eyes didn’t catch in real-time. You see a ripped forearm connecting paddle to orange ball, applying a coat of topspin, and then watch the ball’s wicked curve as it crosses the net, its kiddy-wampus bounce off the table, and the eyes of the opposing player grow into saucers as he goes into his wind-up. And then, close-up of ripped forearm connecting paddle with the orange ball, the ball leaping off the paddle as if it’s a trampoline. And the ball screams over the net, an eyelash of room to spare, and skips meekly after the first bounce, a shiny flat rock thrown into a calm Lake Superior by a master skipper. And, again, the ripped forearm, the saucer eyes, the wind-up and the pitch, and back and forth and back and forth. Beads of sweat fly. Crowd goes ballistic. Riveting.
Last night, I went to English Corner, or “free-chat with the foreigner,” for graduate students. It’s located on their campus, about a five minute walk from the undergraduate campus, on the opposite side of the village. I arrived in the room, a garage-sized brick shack with concrete floor, a vaulted ceiling, bare light bulbs and layers of dust. It’s empty, save for two ping-pong tables.
Procson, as in People’s Republic of China Son, was the only student there when I arrived. He’s well-dressed, well-coiffed, professional in his manners and a born leader. He organizes the English Corner, hence his early arrival. I walked in, greeted him, and pumped my fist: we could play ping-pong!
Procson had this idea that we should speak English, and thus didn’t bring his paddles. I insisted, however, that we could speak English as we played ping-pong. And so off he went to his dorm room and soon returned with his paddles and orange balls.
“Ping-pong is the national game of China, you know,” Procson said as we began. Goosebumps formed on my arms, adrenaline poured through me. There’s no greater advantage in sports than being taken for granted, assumed to be a weak sister. And, clearly, to Procson, I was the ping-pong equivalent of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Procson holds his paddle the way professionals do, with his thumb gripping the handle and his other four fingers behind the paddle. I hold it American style, all five fingers on the handle, as if it’s a tennis racket. “No, you should hold it like this, see,” Procson said, showing me his grip as if, by papal edict, it was the only way a human being could grasp a ping-pong paddle. I told him it was like chopsticks and steak knives – he grew up in China, thus his grip, ala chopsticks; I grew up in America, thus my grip, ala steak knife. And my blood boiled ever more.
Finally, we started hitting, and I was a player possessed. Procson would serve up wicked curves, and I’d drop my return just over the net, to one side of the court or the other, the ball skidding off the side of the table as Procson screamed and lunged. Often, his determined efforts would result in a return, albeit weak, and I’d slam it back. He was upset. There would be no more taking me for granted, no more treating me like the Clippers.
Soon, almost every one of Procson’s returns was a smash. It didn’t matter how hard my hit would come at him, or how low it was to the table, or if it was to his forehand or backhand, Procson answered with a thunderous return. And, somehow, I made like Manny Fernandez, discovering lightning-quick reflexes I never knew I had, and held firm. He’d smash. I’d react instantly, connecting paddle to racket, sending a blooper back over the net, and a lazy, big bounce on his side of the court. He’d wind up, scream, and blister a torrid fastball back at me, and, with God on my side, I’d somehow respond, sending him another blooper. If the series went over four smashes, I’d win, as Procson’s next smash would sail long, off the table, as the ball was spinning itself dizzy by that point. About half the time, though, the series would end early, as my blooper sailed off the back of the table on his side. Almost never, though, did one of his smashes go unreturned. My paddle made contact with whatever came at it.
We didn’t keep score, not yet, as each of us was so completely wrapped up in our volleys that we didn’t want to break rhythm. Finally, as a crowd of other graduate students surrounded the table, cheering, I realized that I was showering them -- all very professional, well-dressed graduate students in biology and engineering and forestry and eco-tourism -- with rivers of my sweat. And I looked down and saw my red shirt drenched as if I had just finished a 20-mile run, and I looked at my side of the ping-pong table. The dust that covered it now joined with my sweat beads to form little mud puddles. And I realized, cripes, I better put down the racket, hang myself out to dry and start to speak freakin English. Ugh.
