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Big slice of humble pie when ping-pong hotshot meets Chinese opponent By
Clark Jessop Christmas 1996 was quickly approaching and I was strapped for cash. So I did what any other entrepreneurial minded teen-ager would do. I got creative. I knew that I could beat all of my friends in ping-pong, so I got 15 friends together, charged five dollars each and had a tournament. For Christmas that year, my sister received a shirt from the Gap instead of a bouncy ball because I was a pretty good ping-pong player. Only if I could have had similar luck last week. Last week there was a ping-pong tournament at the LDS Institute. The good news was that I would be using the same paddle that had brought me luck six years ago. The bad news was that my foreign opponents had paddles that looked more like something that you would take into battle, instead of what you might use in a friendly competition in the basement. When I was in Australia, kids would often be playing Australian Rules Football out in the street. In that game there is no throwing. You kick a ball that is very similar to an American football. I liked to show off by sending a kid about 30 yards away and throwing it. Every time I did they would "oooohh!!" and "aaaahh!!" and say "Wow! A torpedo." (I don't know why they would all call it that). The same expression on those kids' faces was on the faces of all of the Americans as they watched the foreigners warm up for the ping-pong tournament. When they made the brackets, I was relieved to see that my first opponent was an American guy who looked pretty much like me. After beating him 21-8, I thought to myself, "Oh yeah, I still have it." The next guy I was supposed to play was also American. Things were turning out much better than I had expected. In the meantime I had been watching some of the Indian, Taiwanese and Chinese players. They were good, but with one win and my Christmas '96 tournament Championship under my belt, I was able to feel a little confidence. As we were waiting for a table to open up, the guy I was supposed to play suddenly said he had to leave for a study group. I was in the quarterfinals and all I had done was beat an American guy named Bob. Then it happened. My luck had run out. A frantic Chinese man came huffing and puffing into the room. He looked like a parent rushing into a hospital room after hearing his child had been hit by a car. "Ping-pong?!? Can I play ping-pong?!? Too late?!?" He was frantic. Bad sign number one. My heart sunk. I knew what would happen. This was a church ping-pong tournament. What were they going to do -- tell him to go home? So they looked at the bracket and plugged Xin (that was his name, pronounced shin) in for the American guy I was supposed to play. I walked up to Xin and said, "Let's go." I had learned as a kid that shots, bad medicine and impossible ping-pong games were best if you just went ahead and got it over with quickly. Xin wasn't ready. He had to go change into his ping-pong outfit. This was bad sign number two. I stood there in jeans and a T-shirt as Xin returned in a full Adidas tennis outfit. He did some stretches, pulled his paddle out of its case (bad sign number three), and finally he was ready to play. To put this into basketball terms, Xin had might has well have been Shaq as I watched him get ready for out match. After 10 points I was winning 7-3. There was a reason for this. I could tell as I was serving, Xin had some kind of problem with the way I was doing it. Finally he stopped the game to explain. According to official ping-pong rules, he told me, you have to throw the ball at least 10 centimeters up in the air on a serve. All of the foreign spectators nodded as I looked around hoping that someone would tell me Xin was wrong. For him, my serve would be like an American playing basketball against someone who didn't dribble the ball. I was wondering why every one of my serves was blazing past him. For me, on the other hand, it cramped my style. It would be like if I was a pitcher getting ready a game and all of a sudden they told me I had to pitch it left-handed. Well, the rest is history. He beat me, but told me I was "very good for an American." After the game, Xin gave me a big hug and told me over and over how sorry he was about the serve rule, but that was "the real rule." I suppose it was some consolation that he went on to win the whole tournament. As for me, I feel like I'm fairly tolerant of diversity. But if I ever attempt another money making venture . . . I'll play a game where I know how the ball bounces.
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