Table tennis is china's national ball, and now our generations of male and female athletes, with our strong table tennis talent reserves and the training system of the world, have long regarded winning the championship as a grass mustard.
However, many years ago, the development of competitive sports in our country was still in a period of poverty, and it was impossible for our athletes to win the world championship.
In 1959, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, China's male table tennis player Rong Guotuan won the first world championship in competitive sports for New China at the 25th World Table Tennis Championships, which has since led to a boom in table tennis in China.
Rong Guotuan (second from left) won the world championship
The significance of this championship is very significant, making table tennis the de facto national ball of our country and continuing to this day.
Shortly after Rong Guotuan's debut on the top of the world, China's female table tennis players also set off a wave of champions.
The women's table tennis world champions, who are now talked about by Sports fans in China, have emerged after the 90s, such as Deng Yaping, Wang Nan, Zhang Yining, Li Xiaoxia, Ding Ning, and Chen Meng, who won the Tokyo Olympic Games this year.
In fact, as early as 60 years ago, there were already female players in China who were crowned world champions, laying a solid foundation for the glorious history of national football.
Deng Yaping
Today, we will take you to review the first four women's table tennis singles world champions in China and see their lives after winning the world championship.
Although the career trajectories of the four world champions are not the same, they have also embarked on different paths after retiring.
But in their hearts, the four words "winning glory for the country" are engraved, and from the court to the bottom of the court, it has never changed.
Ping Pong Girls' Group
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="10" > Qiu Zhonghui: New China's first women's world champion and shanghai strong woman</h1>
In 1961, the first women's champion in the history of the Chinese table tennis team was born in this World Table Tennis Championships, and the champion was Qiu Zhonghui.
The 26-year-old Yunnan girl opened the account of the champion of Chinese women's table tennis.
Qiu Zhonghui was born in 1935 in a family of eunuchs in Tengchong County, Yunnan Province, and his father Qiu Tianpei was the county prince of Tengchong County, responsible for building the Huitong Bridge on the Nu River.
On the day of his daughter's birth, the bridge was completed, so he was happy to name his daughter "Zhong Hui".
Qiu Zhonghui
Xiao Zhong Hui is cheerful and lively, loves sports, and is especially good at playing table tennis. At the age of 17, he represented the Yunnan team in the first national table tennis championship and won the first place in the southwest division.
In the following year, Qiu Zhonghui entered the national table tennis team with her excellent playing style and excellent results in China.
Subsequently, the national championship, the women's team singles main force and other honors came pouring in, and she also began to represent the Chinese team in the international table tennis competition.
Qiu Zhonghui, who has finished third in both women's singles and women's doubles at the 25th World Table Tennis Championships, shined at the 26th World Table Tennis Championships in Beijing two years later.
Qiu Zhonghui will advance to the final against world champion Gao Ji'an from Hungary.
Qiu Zhonghui won the championship
At that time, the table tennis tournament was still a long-inning system of 5 innings and 3 wins, and Qiu Zhonghui and Gao Jian fought 2-2 in the first two sets.
In the decider, Qiu Zhonghui, who dared to fight and play tactically targeted, won 21-19 and successfully lifted the women's singles championship trophy.
The significance of this championship is not only the first women's table tennis world champion in New China, but also the first women's world champion in the history of new Chinese sports. And after Qiu Zhonghui, there are those golden women's table tennis champions that we mentioned earlier.
In this sense, Qiu Zhonghui is their leader and is the first female table tennis player to "eat crabs".
Qiu Zhonghui is not only an athlete, she also loves to read, especially novels. It's just that because she often sleeps and forgets to read, her eyesight is not affected so much that she we see in old photos, and even she who won the world championship, is wearing glasses to play.
However, wearing glasses, she can reach the top of the world, which shows her talent and effort. Two years after being crowned world champion, the 28-year-old Qiu Zhonghui chose to retire as the coach of the Beijing team and national team.
With the development of table tennis in the world, Qiu Zhonghui realized that it is very necessary to improve the training level of table tennis players in China.
So he began to engage in sports scientific research work, and wrote books such as "The Playing Style and Technology of Table Tennis" and "The Winning Law of China's Advantageous Competitive Projects", which has played a great role in promoting the development of the Chinese table tennis team and even the Chinese sports industry.
Good people do everything well. In order to connect with the international community and read foreign sports-related books, Qiu Zhonghui began to teach herself English to the point where she could give speeches in English.
In the late 1980s, her husband, Han Moning, went to the Soviet Union as an embassy counsellor, and Qiu Zhonghui, who had become the counselor's wife, organized local embassy staff to play table tennis in Moscow and became the director of the cultural and sports department of the embassy.
Through these social activities, she saw a huge market for the development of the table tennis industry. Riding on the wave of domestic business in the sea at that time, after returning to Beijing, she founded "Qiu Zhonghui Sporting Goods Company", which was officially opened in March 1994 on Beijing Stadium Road to do the work of developing sporting goods.
Under the strong initiative of Qiu Zhonghui, the company's scientific research team also successfully developed China's first domestic table tennis serve machine.
Qiu Zhonghui said: "Our training conditions were difficult, it was the coaches and sparring partners who served us, and now that we have a serve machine, it can reduce the burden of the coach very well, and also give the athletes closer to the training intensity of the game." ”
In 2002, the company's shareholding system was reformed, and qiu Zhonghui, who was 70 years old, served as the chairman and legal person of the company. When facing the media, she said: "I have been challenging myself all my life, fighting when playing ball, fighting more when working, many people say that I don't have a business mind, but I have persevered for so many years, and I have done a good job." ”
Qiu Zhonghui, who is now 86 years old, still maintains her love for table tennis and Chinese sports.
She often gives lectures in colleges and universities, and conveys ideas about national fitness to young people, calling on more young people to participate in sports.
"Although I later engaged in business, I have always been a table tennis player in my bones." This is Qiu Zhonghui's deepest understanding of herself, and it is also the patriotic heart of the first female world champion in New China.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" > Lin Huiqing: The brilliant life of a generation of returned overseas Chinese and a generation of "cutting ball queens"</h1>
After Qiu Zhonghui, the champions of China's women's table tennis team have sprung up like mushrooms.
Among them, the second world champion, Lin Huiqing, her life is different from other table tennis women in China - she is an overseas Chinese born abroad, and she did not return to China to play until she became an adult and grew into a world champion.
Lin Huiqing was born in 1941 to a Chinese family in Jakarta, Indonesia, to a father whose ancestral home was Xinhui, Guangdong. Xiao Huiqing has loved table tennis since she was a child, loves the defensive style of cutting the ball, and her academic performance is also excellent, and she won the all-Indonesian junior table tennis championship when she was in junior high school.
In 1959, at the age of 18, Lin Huiqing returned to China with the support of her family, was admitted to the Shanghai University of Sport to study, and was selected for the Shanghai table tennis team. She started her table tennis career in China very smoothly, winning the third place in the national youth table tennis competition for the first time.
Lin Huiqing
In 1961, at the age of 20, Lin Huiqing participated in the National Table Tennis Championships for the first time, and she played for shanghai in the team competition, defeating the world champion Qiu Zhonghui, who represented Beijing. The baton of the women's singles world champion was thus handed over in the hands of the two of them.
In fact, Lin Huiqing had already represented the Chinese team in the World Table Tennis Championships where Qiu Zhonghui won the championship, but she was still very young at that time, and she was inexperienced in international competitions, and as a chipper, she was prone to impatience.
Realizing her problems, Lin Huiqing immersed herself in hard training and honed the way she played with the ball in the competition, and this continuous effort allowed her to go further at the 27th World Table Tennis Championships, eliminating the Japanese star Seki Masako.
Lin Huiqing (left) plays with Premier Zhou
At the 28th World Table Tennis Championships in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, 24, 24-year-old Lin Huiqing and her partner Zheng Minzhi won the women's team championship and women's doubles championship for the Chinese team, which was the first table tennis women's doubles world championship in the history of the Chinese team.
Lin Huiqing also broke into the women's singles final, but regrettably lost to Japan's Naoko Fukazu. Although she still couldn't laugh to the end, everyone could see that Lin Huiqing was only one layer of window paper away from the world championship, although this layer of window paper took 6 years to be broken. Kung Fu pays off.
In April 1971, after stepping out of the shadow of injury, the 30-year-old Lin Huiqing was unstoppable and won three championships in women's singles, women's doubles and women's team at the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan.
Zheng Minzhi, Lin Huiqing
Among them, he defeated his old partner Zheng Minzhi in the women's singles final, becoming the second Chinese table tennis player to be crowned the women's singles world champion after Qiu Zhonghui, and was called the "Queen of Cutting Balls" by the domestic media.
Although the older Lin Huiqing ended her athlete career after this World Table Tennis Championships, she still did not leave her beloved table tennis table, and she took over the coaching whip of the national table tennis women's team of her mentor Wang Zhiliang, becoming the first female head coach in New China.
It was also in that year that Lin Huiqing participated in a more important event than winning the world championship – the Sino-US table tennis diplomacy of "turning the big ball with a small ball".
As the coach of the women's team, Lin Huiqing was invited to visit the United States with the Chinese table tennis team, and also won the respect of American players with her unique cutting style of play.
Ping-Pong diplomacy
After coaching the national team for 8 years, Lin Huiqing left the national team and went to Hong Kong with her husband to settle down. Like Qiu Zhonghui, Lin Huiqing began her career in business.
At that time, Hong Kong had not yet returned, there was no "one country, two systems", and in the capitalist business environment, her business experience was smoother than that of the elder sister Qiu Zhonghui.
However, she is still the vice president of the Chinese Table Tennis Association in her busy schedule, and through the identity of the vice president of the Table Tennis Association, she holds and participates in activities such as "Love the Motherland, Love Hong Kong, Love Overseas Chinese" held by Overseas Chinese in Hong Kong and overseas Chinese in various places, and also organizes many exchange activities with table tennis as the theme.
As a returned overseas Chinese, she has made a contribution to promoting the exchange of feelings between compatriots on both sides of the strait and the three places.
Lin Huiqing (left)
In the 2005 World Table Tennis Championships held in Shanghai, 64-year-old Lin Huiqing finally had the opportunity to return to Shanghai for a few more days, and would meet old friends and watch the game.
"I used to be too busy, at most I just went to Suzhou and other places to do business in a hurry, and I didn't have time to stay in Shanghai, what a rare opportunity this World Table Tennis Championships!"
Since then, Lin Huiqing has gradually reduced her work burden and has more time to return to the mainland. After being elected as a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, she will return to the national table tennis team every year to visit and exchange experiences with young players.
Zhang Yining, Wang Nan and other famous players who are known as the "Big Devil" of women's table tennis by fans worship Lin Huiqing, the "queen of cutting balls", just like ordinary fans worship them.
Lin Huiqing, 80, said in a recent interview: "Table tennis has always been an important part of my life, and I have always felt sincerely happy that I can do what I can for China and even the world table tennis. ”
Zhang Yining
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="32" > Hu Yulan: from chipper to tackler, retired to coach in a foreign country</h1>
Unlike today, in the era when Lin Huiqing won the world championship, cutting the ball was the mainstream way of playing table tennis. Because of this, many of the players cultivated by the national team at that time were cut balls.
Later, because the "inner volume" of the team's chippers was very serious, a former chipper like Hu Yulan should play the attack, and it was this change in the way of holding the shot that made her the third women's singles world champion in the history of the Chinese team.
Hu Yulan was born in 1945 in Jinzhou, Liaoning. Unlike Qiu Zhonghui and Lin Huiqing, she was exposed to table tennis late, and it was not until she was 14 years old when she was in junior high school that she first touched the table tennis racket, and then began to carry out formal training in table tennis.
On the other hand, it is precisely because of the late contact that it proves the strength of her talent.
Hu Yulan
In 1960, when Hu Yulan was 15 years old, she was selected by the coach of the Liaoning Provincial Team for her fierce style of play and good physical fitness. It had only been a year since she had first picked up a ping-pong racket.
Despite her late exposure to table tennis, her outstanding bounce and desperate Sanlang style of fighting for every ball have made up for her lack of basic skills to some extent.
In the Liaoning provincial team, Hu Yulan's advantages of excellent bounce and fast movement gradually appeared, and the coach thought that she was a good seedling for practicing cutting the ball - as mentioned earlier, just like today's horizontal shooting method, cutting the ball was the mainstream way of playing at that time, and Hu Yulan was thus trained as a chipper.
In 1964, he was selected for the national training team, entered the national first team, and participated in the Scandinavian Championship and won the second place.
However, at this time, Hu Yulan faced a big problem of career planning: whether to continue to play the ball. It should be known that the "queen of cutting the ball" Lin Huiqing and her partner Zheng Minzhi have been at the top of the team in the cutting style of play, and also joined forces to win the women's singles championship and runner-up of the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in 1971.
There is no doubt that in the case of competing for lin and zheng, it is difficult for Hu Yulan to break through the ceiling of the chipping style of play.
Therefore, under the persuasion of the head coach Liang Youneng, Hu Yulan began to change to playing attacking ball, in order to master the new way of playing, Hu Yulan made a lot of efforts, she understood that only by finding another way, can we get closer to the championship.
Liang Youneng (first from left)
Sure enough, at the 32nd World Table Tennis Championships held in Yugoslavia in 1973, 28-year-old Hu Yulan lived up to coach Liang Youneng's expectations and won the women's singles championship. She became the third national table tennis women's singles world champion after Qiu Zhonghui and Lin Huiqing.
From a former sharpshooter to a powerful cross-board attacker, Hu Yulan's gorgeous turn made everyone shine.
In 1975, after working with her teammates to win the Women's Championships of the World Table Tennis Championships for the Chinese team, the 30-year-old Hu Yulan chose to retire.
Like Lin Huiqing, she also stayed in the national team as a coach, trained famous players such as Yan Guili and Geng Lijuan, and continued the glory of Chinese women's table tennis.
Yan Guili
Twice awarded the Sports Medal of Honor by the National Sports Commission, and in 1981, she was awarded the title of national coach, which is the best proof of her coaching ability.
After stepping down as the coach of the national team, in 1987, Hu Yulan moved to France and served as the head coach of the French table tennis team, leading the French team to become a European team, and also cultivated famous French players such as Annie and Gulan, and the French women's team also achieved a good result of the third place in the women's team at the 41st World Table Tennis Championships.
In the French team area is ten years, after retirement Hu Yulan stayed in Paris, do some basic work of table tennis training and guidance, and once met by netizens in Paris, she is guiding teenagers to practice.
Hu Yulan was a guide in France
Now 76 years old, she has settled in France for many years, and his family is used to living in France. Hu Yulan, who has been invited to return to the motherland several times, deeply appreciates the rapid changes in the motherland and the strength of the development of table tennis.
When interviewed, Hu Yulan guided her to play her humorous side as a northeasterner: "I don't have a house in China, and I can only stay in a hotel when I come back, although many friends have called on me to return to China, but buying a house in Beijing is more expensive than in France, I can only consider it first." Fortunately, I'm not that old and still have time. ”
However, she also said that even if she does not return to China to settle down, she will do her part to work for Sino-French sports exchanges and the promotion of table tennis in Europe.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="40" > Ge Xinai: the unpredictable "Ge Laowei", the pioneer of straight-board cutting style of play</h1>
For the younger generation of fans, for the table tennis world champion who came out of Henan, everyone will think more of the "queen of table tennis" Deng Yaping and the first men's table tennis grand slam winner Liu Guoliang.
In fact, before them, Ge Xinai was the first generation of "big devil" of Chinese table tennis produced by Henan.
In 1953, Ge Xin'ai was born in Changyuan, Henan. Her father was a school pedis teacher, and she also began to play sports under his father's guidance and showed a talent that was different from ordinary people.
In 1970, at the age of 17, Ge Xinai entered the Henan Provincial Women's Team, and three years later he was successfully selected for the national team. Zhang Li, a fellow from Henan who is also from Henan, is also an excellent golfer, and the two are called "Henan Gemini Constellation".
Ge Xin Love
However, compared with Zhang Li, Ge Xinai's personal technical characteristics are more prominent, which also lays the foundation for her future rise.
Ge Xinai's straight-line cutting style of playing was unique at that time. Friends who are familiar with table tennis play know that the straight-panel grip is more technically demanding on the player's hand, not to mention the combination of the playing style of the ball, which means that the player should be just right for the ball to fall and the strength of the pinch size.
Ge Xinai's technical characteristics just play the advantages of direct shooting: mainly cutting, cutting with attack, cutting the ball low and turning, serving changes, landing point is very deep, making the opponent unpredictable and difficult to overcome.
Ge Xin'ai (first from left)
What makes the opponent even more headache is that Ge Xin'ai has excellent physical fitness and is good at playing with the ball, and playing with her is like being cut by a blunt knife.
Because of the vision problem, Ge Xin'ai wore glasses to play, just like Qiu Zhonghui at that time, and the dress on the field was obviously different from other players. Therefore, in response to these characteristics of Ge Xinai, the national table tennis team gave her a very playful nickname "Ge LaoWei" - like a grinding monster.
The table tennis industry unanimously believes that Ge Xinai's unique straight-board cutting style of play is the predecessor of the straight-board horizontal playing method adopted by technical players such as Liu Guoliang, Ma Lin, and Wang Hao many years later.
In this sense, Ge Xinai, as a female player, has greatly enriched the development of table tennis playing style and promoted the progress of table tennis technology.
Liu Guoliang
Ge Xinai, who has participated in three World Table Tennis Championships in his career, can have a champion in each time:
In the 33rd World Table Tennis Championships in 1975, Ge Xinai, who debuted in the competition at the age of 22, won the third place in women's singles and won the women's team championship with the team;
In the 34th World Table Tennis Championships in 1977, she once again won the third place in women's singles, and won the third place in women's doubles with her partner Zhang Li, and defended the women's team championship;
Zhang Li
At the 35th World Table Tennis Championships held in Pyongyang, North Korea in 1979, Ge Xin'ai, who had finished third in both singles competitions, finally got his long-cherished wish and won the women's singles championship. She also became China's fourth women's singles world champion after Qiu Zhonghui, Lin Huiqing and Hu Yulan.
In addition, she also partnered with Liang Geliang to win the mixed doubles championship, and joined forces with her teammates to win the women's team triple crown. With three championships in hand, Ge Xin'ai naturally became the best player in the World Table Tennis Championships, which is what we now call MVP (Most Valuable Player).
Ge Xin'ai was awarded the title of athlete in 1981 and was twice awarded the Sports Medal of Honor by the National Sports Commission.
Ge Xinai's experience after retiring from the army is also very rich. He first returned to Henan to coach for a period of time, and then was invited to coach in North Korea and Egypt.
But because her husband and children are in the United States, after all, there are fewer and more days to go, so it didn't take long for Ge Xinai to resign as the head coach of the Egyptian team and go to the United States to reunite with his family and serve as a table tennis club coach in Chicago.
Ge Xinai has been teaching abroad for many years, and through the comparison of training intensity and training methods, she has a deeper understanding of the strength of the Chinese table tennis team.
She once said in an interview that table tennis can become the national ball of our country is not accidental, but because our players and coaches have been studying and innovating the technical and tactical play for many years, and adopting the most advanced training methods. The national table tennis players seem to have won the honor, but in fact, the efforts they put behind them are very understandable.
Today, Ge Xinai, who has retired for many years, still lives overseas and, like Hu Yulan, is doing her part in promoting table tennis in the world.
In his spare time, he travels around the world with his family, and if he has the opportunity to return home, he can also meet old friends and chat with young players in China. Despite his age, Ge Xin'ai still retains his passion for table tennis.
Deng Xiaoping presented Ge Xin'ai with the award
Some readers may ask, why do former world champions like Ge Xinai and Hu Yulan have to settle abroad? And in every World Series, you can see Chinese players representing other countries, what is going on?
Let's answer the first question first. In different historical stages, people's pursuit of quality of life is also different.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the living standards of our people were not high, and athletes who could win world championships in the field of sports were naturally the top talents in society.
Their desire to have access to more of the outside world and thus enrich their material and spiritual lives is a common human condition.
Not only Hu Yulan and Ge Xinai, but also many of China's former world champions and Olympic champions have settled abroad for various reasons, and even joined foreign nationals to participate in the world competition, the most famous of which is Luan Jujie, who was once China's first Olympic fencing gold medalist.
She made a comeback at the age of 50 to represent the Canadian fencing team at the Beijing Olympics.
Let's answer the second question. China regards table tennis as the national ball and has the best quality table tennis development soil in the world. Due to the huge population base in Our country, the unprecedented mass base, and the extremely rich selection of materials, from the junior teams of various provincial teams, youth teams to the national team, a fierce internal competitive environment has been formed.
In today's parlance, it is a very cruel "inner volume" situation.
Luan Jujie
The development of table tennis in foreign countries is not so "rolled" compared with China, so in order to participate in the three major table tennis competitions of table tennis, the World Table Tennis Championships, the Olympic Games, the World Cup, and some other international competitions, they chose to join other nationalities and represent other countries.
An important source for the development of table tennis in China is the older generation of table tennis players represented by famous men and women such as Rong Guotuan, Zhuang Zedong, and Qiu Zhonghui.
Before the development of China's sports industry, it has laid the foundation for the world championship of table tennis, and has accumulated a reputation and set an example for the development of table tennis in China. Let us have the strength and status of development in the field of table tennis, and then grow into a table tennis "Big Mac".
Moreover, settling abroad does not mean losing contact with the motherland and severing relations with table tennis. Hu Yulan and Ge Xinai have been engaged in table tennis-related occupations abroad, and will return to their motherland for exchanges as soon as they have the opportunity.
Zhuang Zedong
Their purpose is for the rapid development of table tennis in the world, so that the sport can truly become a worldwide and professional sport like football and tennis.
At the end of the day, it's all about a love of table tennis. Winning the world championship on behalf of the country is the footnote of this deepest love.
The only regret is that table tennis entered the Olympic family late, and it was only in 1988 that the Seoul Olympic Games first became an official Olympic event. If it can be 20 years earlier, I believe that these four national table tennis women will also have the strength to compete for gold and silver for the Chinese delegation in the Olympic games.
1988 Seoul Olympics
However, everything was already the best arranged.
Qiu Zhonghui, Lin Huiqing, Hu Yulan and Ge Xinai, four seniors in the table tennis world, have made a big splash on the court, and after retiring, they can also play their own value while enjoying life, which is enough to win the admiration of all Chinese people.
Once again, A tribute to the four women's table tennis singles world champions!
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A niu. Qiu Zhonghui: China's first women's table tennis world champion[J], Celebrity Biography, 2010-005 (Part 1);
XUE Miaoyan. Using Table Tennis as a Bridge to Promote Friendship with Silver Balls: Remembering Lin Huiqing, a Strange Man in Chinese Table Tennis[N].Liberation Daily, 2005-04-12.
Ding Yaoyao. Liaoning's first world champion[N].Shenyang Daily, 2009-05-01.
LI Yue. Henan's first world champion, the "Henan Twin Stars" of Chinese women's table tennis[N].Henan Daily, 2021-06-24.