Generally, the Princeton table tennis club plays their matches with the ultimate goal of beating the other team. This was hardly the case when Peking University, a top Chinese institution, visited Princeton to take on the club team in a friendly match on Saturday.
"Today was a great experience for me," senior president John Son said. "I thoroughly enjoyed watching our team play members from Peking University's table tennis team. Events like these don't come around very often, so I feel very fortunate to have gotten a chance to witness such an event first hand."
Indeed, the final scores of the matches did not matter as much as the interaction between the two teams.
"I'd like to emphasize the fact that the point of today's event was friendship first, competition second," Son said.
Match results
As for the scores, PKU won five of the matches and Princeton won two. Sophomore Adam Hugh beat PKU's Liang Geliang, 3-1, and junior Pan Lin defeated Shi Shengnan, 2-1. Freshman Eric Finkelstein, senior Mike Hsu, prospective students Alden Fan and Judy Hugh and Volker Schroder — the club faculty advisor — all fell 0-2 to PKU team members. Despite the scores, as Son mentioned, the results are not nearly as important as the event itself.
Princeton's first victory came off the paddle of Pan Lin who beat Shi Shengnan, a very strong PKU player. Princeton was down 3-0 in matches, so when this occurred Hugh yelled, "Give it up for Pan Lin, Princeton's first win," inducing a roar of applause from the roughly 150 spectators in the room.
Adam Hugh, who is a U.S. national team member, had the final match of the day. Teammate Finkelstein described it as "the show stopper and, fittingly, the last match."
Famed opponent
Hugh took on the ping-pong legend Liang Geliang, who is an older player from PKU. Liang is actually the coach of the team now, but as a younger player he experienced success as the champion of the World Table Tennis Championships men's singles in 1971, 1973, 1975 and 1979. The championships were held every other year, thus he won 4 out of 5 championships in the 1970s. As a player, he was a major force in the table tennis world, and he continues to influence world-class players as a coach.
"Although Adam [Hugh] is a much stronger player, I felt there was something symbolic about the young athlete taking out the aged world champion," Finkelstein said.
By making this tour around the United States, the members of PKU team are embracing the concept of ping pong diplomacy.
While they are connecting with various institutions based on their ping-pong skills, they are concerned with the friendships they leave behind.
The tour is also promoting the 2008 Summer Olympics which will be held in Beijing. The table tennis competitions will be held in the city's brand new, state-of-the-art 8,000-spectator gymnasium.
PKU's current tour began in the Washington, D.C., area at the Potomac Table Tennis Club on Nov. 22. The PKU team then played matches in Baltimore at the U.N. Table Tennis Club before coming to Princeton. The day after the match, the team flew to Los Angeles for its last competition. PKU also visited MIT, Harvard and Yale, but Princeton was the only university in which a "friendship match" took place.
Princeton's table tennis team is currently ranked No. 2 in the country behind Texas Wesleyan University. The quality of both the school and the team made Princeton an appealing choice to visit.
Aside from having a great, exciting set of ping-pong matches, more important things occurred in the time that the PKU players were here. A connection between schools, countries and teams was established. Moreover, Liang's experience and history seemed to emanate an all-encompassing sense of significance throughout the room.
"It was a great experience to be part of this modern ping pong diplomacy," Finkelstein said.
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