pīng pāng
Table tennis, as “乒乓（pīng pāng)” in Chinese, is considered as the national sport of China, and there are tens of thousands of professional players each year participating in sports events and championships. It’s extremely hard to become top-ranked players in this super competitive environment. However, life in China as a table tennis player can still be quite easy as long as you play well. You can join the provincial team and become a professional player at 14, which means you can start earning monthly salaries and some extra money from winning championships at 14. It will also be much easier for you to enter university, which you do not need to pay for as the team will cover all your college fees. After graduation, you can choose either to stay in the team or to retire. If you retire, you can get quite a large amount of retirement fee, and it’s also much easier for retired table tennis players to find a decent job as many companies hire table tennis players to represent them and take part in national sports events among enterprises.
However, there are also lots of stress they need to face every day as professionals. This project aims to showcase the stress and lightness of table tennis players aged from 9 to 17 in the Jiangsu provincial team and to portrait the daily training routine of competitive sports players.
Chen Yuanyu, 16, has won three championships in the Asian Table Tennis Junior Championship. He had been worrying about the next day’s selection match of the national team for almost a week.
He then came first among 8 players in the selection match, and has successfully joined in the Junior National Table Tennis Team of China.
Shen Feng, 15, has just entered the provincial team.
Slogan: “人生能有几回搏” （How many times can you fight in your life?）
Male players aged from 9 to 17
Female players aged from 9-12
They will soon take part in the selection match to compete with each other to join the provincial professional team.
