The Development of a Chinese Player

Chinese children are tested at a very early age for sports skills. Those that test well are often put into special sports schools. Cheng was tested at age 5, and tested highly for racket sport skills, and so was put into a special sports school. From age 5 to about 12, he was trained in both table tennis and badminton. From age 12 on, he was essentially a full-time table tennis player, dropping out of school to focus solely on table tennis. Most other top Chinese players have similar stories.

Others come from regular schools. Essentially every school in China has a table tennis team that trains regularly. In a country of 1.3 billion, that's a huge number of teams! According to the Shanghai Daily (May 7, 2005), 10 million players play regularly. These are players who are exposed regularly to what high-level play is like, not the basement players that make up the masses in the U.S. and many other countries.