Rong Guotuan has loved table tennis since childhood. In February 1957, he competed in the Hong Kong Inter-Port Table Tennis Tournament, winning three titles: men's team, men's doubles and men's singles. In April, when the Japanese team visited Hong Kong after participating in the 23rd World Table Tennis Championships, Yung Kuo-tuan defeated Ighiro Ogimura, who had just won the men's singles championship. In November, he returned to the mainland from Hong Kong and entered the Guangzhou Institute of Physical Education.
Rong Guotuan has made outstanding contributions to China's table tennis dominance in the world. Its motto "You can have a few beats in life, don't beat at this time, and stay when" has become the motto of the majority of Athletes in China. During the Cultural Revolution, Rong Guotuan suffered injustice and persecution. On June 20, 1968, he ended his life by suicide. On June 23, 1978, the State Sports Commission held a conference on the implementation of the cadre policy, rehabilitated Rong Guotuan, restored his reputation, and held a memorial service and a ceremony to place Rong Guotuan's ashes in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.
Rong Guotuan, whose ancestral home is Nanping Town, Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, was born on August 10, 1937 in Hong Kong to a poor seafarer family. His father, Rong Mianzhi, worked as a child laborer at the age of 15 and later worked as a seaman in a steamship company, where he participated in the provincial strike and the Guangzhou uprising. This patriotic compatriot in Hong Kong always hoped to have a strong country and a united nation as his strong backing, so he named his only son "Guo tuan".
In the winter of 1941, the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, and Rong Mian's family returned to their hometown of Nanping Town, Zhuhai, Guangdong. In the autumn of 1943, Rong Guotuan entered the Zhenxian School in Nanping. The small national group is talented, hard-working, and has outstanding achievements. At the age of 7, he was occupied by a small white celluloid fan, so he formed an indissoluble relationship with table tennis. Although he was small and not much taller than the ping-pong table, he had an aura when he played the ball, and his progress was rapid, and he soon became the "ping-pong ball king" of the whole school. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Rong Guotuan's father, Rong Mianzhi, returned to Hong Kong as a seaman, and Rong Guotuan transferred to the Hong Kong Salesian Kindergarten in February 1948. However, due to the family's poor situation, Rong Guotuan could only drop out of school halfway.
At the age of 15, he became a child laborer at a fishing house in Hong Kong's Eastern District. Young and single, Rong Guotuan got up early every day in the dark to pick fish and transport shrimp in a muddy and smelly smell. But he was not buried in poverty, because his father was a member of the Seamen's Union Union of the Hong Kong Workers' Progressive Organization, and he was given the opportunity to practice at the Recreation Hall of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions Club.
It was during that time that Yung's ball skills improved rapidly--- he spent most of his time practicing and studying technology, and his talent and peacetime hard work made him quickly become a top player in Hong Kong.
In February 1957, Hong Kong held the Hong Kong Table Tennis Championships, which Wasuroy Yung represented the Federation of Trade Unions and won the men's team and singles and doubles championships with his partners, and his reputation has been greatly enhanced ever since. In late April 1957, the Japanese table tennis team visited Hong Kong, Rong Guotuan, like a newborn calf, played against the world champion Di Cun, broke out a big unpopular --- he won two consecutive sets of 21:19 and 21:13, and in a state of exclamation, he pulled the world champion off the horse. Yung Kuo-tuan defeated Di Cun, and the news spread throughout Hong Kong overnight, and women and children became known, and he became a news figure.
During the period when he first became famous, Rong Guotuan asked himself the same question in his heart more than once: Who do you play for? The contradiction between the rong guotuan and the Hong Kong Table Tennis Federation has a long history. In the early spring of 1954, the annual table tennis championships in Hong Kong began. The 17-year-old Rong Guotuan represented the young "Citizen Team". Before the game, he was invited to a tea house by the Table Tennis Association to talk, asking him to play match-fixing to promote the South China team to win the championship, and promised to send a sum of money as compensation, which he immediately refused.
In 1956, at the Asian Table Tennis Championships, the Table Tennis Federation manipulated the name of Rong Guotuan, which made him lose the opportunity to participate, which strengthened his determination to leave Hong Kong. Rong Guotuan's father, Rong Mianzhi, once participated in the "provincial and Hong Kong strikes". Under the influence of his father, Rong Guotuan has always longed for the mainland of the motherland.
At the end of 1956, Rong Guotuan submitted an application to the Guangdong Provincial Sports Committee, requesting to serve the motherland. After a series of twists and turns, Rong Guotuan received an admission notice from the Guangzhou Institute of Physical Education. On November 1, 1957, Rong Guotuan, carrying a simple suit, accompanied by the staff of the Federation of Trade Unions, stepped across the Luohu Bridge in Shenzhen and threw himself into the embrace of the motherland. He wrote down his mood for that day in his diary: "This is my first day of my new life. When I stepped into the location of the Guangzhou Institute of Physical Education, table tennis players who had long known me shook hands and said hello to me, expressing a warm welcome. At this time, my heart was full of happiness. I wanted to be one of them a long time ago, and now I've finally got it. "
From the first day of his return to China, he enjoyed unprecedented "special care". His monthly salary at the time was $86.50, which is rare among athletes. In the national team, Rong Guotuan has a variety of sparring styles. It didn't take long for his physique to strengthen, and his technical aspects were also known as "eight-armed Nezha" because of his proficiency in pumping, killing, cutting, hanging, pulling, rubbing, pushing, and blocking, and his state reached the peak of his career. After nearly a year of intensive training, in the list of 11 participants in the Dortmund World Table Tennis Championships determined by the Chinese Table Tennis Association, Rong Guotuan's name is prominently listed.
In the first half of the World Table Tennis Championships, the men's team reached the final four for the first time. He Long sent a congratulatory telegram to encourage Zhou Enlai to personally inquire about the game every day, no matter how late it was. Under great pressure, in the eight-in-four competition, the team members fell off the horse, and Rong Guotuan became the "only remaining fruit" of the men's singles and survived to the final. The final opponent was Hungarian veteran Sidos.
Chinese had never been so close to the championship dream, before the game, Rong Guotuan shouted out the slogan of "life can have a few beats", and his teammates had prepared flowers and hidden behind the baffle. It's a game destined to be recorded in history, a man destined to be a hero. In the competition, Rong Guotuan vividly played the advantages of Chinese small and flexible, mobilizing Xi duo, who was 36 years old and weighed 180 pounds, breathlessly, and could not play out his technical advantages at all. In the end, Rong Guotuan defeated Xi duo 3:1 to win the world championship--- which is one of the most iconic events in the history of Chinese sports.
This world champion has put the fate of Rong Guotuan on another track, and has since changed the status of table tennis in the Chinese sports system. Table tennis began to be enshrined as the "national ball", and gradually became the sustenance of national emotions and became the symbol of national sports--- in September 1959, the 10,000-person table tennis championship for employees and cadres held in Xicheng District of Beijing, more than 20,000 people signed up for the competition. After returning to China, the 21-year-old was also treated like a "national hero--- He Long, who was then vice premier of the State Council, personally went to the airport to pick up and present flowers; Mao Zedong received him several times; Zhou Enlai listed Rong Guotuan's victory in the championship and the Ten Years of National Day as two happy events in 1959; Whenever foreign guests visited, he was a regular guest at state banquets. The handsome Rong Guotuan has become a national idol. All kinds of letters came like snowflakes, and the table tennis team specially set up a letter reading team for him. "People are often blocked on the streets, and they have to ask him to speak, sign or something." Rong Guotuan's wife, Huang Xiuzhen, said.
In fact, Rong Guotuan is not just an athlete, he pursues a wealth of things in the spiritual world, and the breadth of knowledge is often surprising. On a visit abroad, Rong Guotuan talked to an Italian about the Italian national hero Garibaldi, about his strategy and tactics when he was fighting, about his qualities as a person, and the Italian was very emotional: "You know him better than I am an Italian." Brainy, erudite, hardworking... This series of advantages also makes Rong Guotuan's achievements not only in the arena.
In 1961, the 26th World Table Tennis Championships was held in Beijing, and the Chinese team participated in by Rong Guotuan defeated the Japanese team 5:3 and won the men's team world championship for the first time. At the end of 1964, Rong Guotuan was appointed as the coach of the national women's team at the "time of peril" when the women's team lost consecutively to Japan. In order to fight a good turnaround battle, he gave up his vacation, forgot to eat and sleep, and finally brought out a women's team with excellent technology and ideological style. In April 1965, he led the Chinese women's team to participate in the 28th World Table Tennis Championships held in Yugoslavia, and won the women's team championship, women's doubles and mixed doubles championships, forming a situation where as long as there are Chinese female table tennis players, they will definitely be able to win the championship, and once again shake the world table tennis world.
On June 20, 1968, nine years after winning the world championship--- the table tennis giant, who had been shrouded in countless halos, chose to say goodbye to the world he loved. In 1966, when the "Cultural Revolution" began, the sports system was not spared, and the training and competition of the team members were all paralyzed. Although gui is a world champion, Rong Guotuan's "overseas experience" is also used as a crime against revisionism.
Late at night on June 20, 1968, Huang Xiuzhen attended the sports committee's criticism meeting and found that her husband had not yet returned home, so she went out to look for it, but did not get any response. The next day, Someone found Rong Guotuan's stiff body on a crooked neck tree at a duck farm near Longtan Lake, and in his jacket pocket was a note with the last words--- "I love my reputation more than life." Unable to bear the misunderstanding and humiliation, a generation of stars quietly fell and became a tragic hero in the history of Chinese table tennis--- who died at the age of 31, just after the age of standing.
On June 23, 1978, the State Sports Commission held a conference on the implementation of the cadre policy, rehabilitated Rong Guotuan, restored his reputation, and held a memorial service and a ceremony to place Rong Guotuan's ashes in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing.
In his eulogy, he commented on Rong Guotuan as follows: "Loving the party, loving socialism and sports, being upright, being frank and frank, being loyal and conscientious in developing China's socialist sports cause, and contributing his life's energy to accelerating the improvement of China's table tennis sports technology level and cultivating the young generation of table tennis athletes."
In a suicide note left to his family, Rong Guotuan wrote: "Father, Xiuzhen, Xiaoqiu: I want to involve you, it is really a sin, curse me, hate me!" Forget me forever. Before Rong Guotuan died, he wrote a total of three suicide notes. In addition to the ones left to his family, the other two letters were written to the rebels and the Revolutionary Committee of the State Sports Commission at that time. The letter reads: "I am too deep in the dragon to repair poison?! I love face more than life! My history is innocent! The biggest mistake was to stand in the wrong line twice! Don't doubt that I am the enemy. Ask Chairman Mao for his guilt!"
He shoots straight and fast, has a wide range of ball paths, many changes, especially good serve, pushing, pulling, cutting, rubbing and forehand and backhand attack techniques are good. In the game, he uses tactics to be flexible and unique. In terms of technical methods, Rong Guotuan developed the traditional Chinese left push and right attack method, and successfully created a new technology of sending and not turning, rubbing and not turning. After being selected for the national team, he painstakingly practiced the straight-forward fast attack method. The ball has a wide range of paths, especially good at serving, pushing, pulling, cutting, rubbing and forehand attack techniques are good, and soon formed a "fast, accurate, fierce, change" technical style.
In 1958, Rong Guotuan was selected to join the Guangdong Provincial Table Tennis Team, and in the same year, he participated in the National Table Tennis Championships and won the men's singles championship. Awarded the title of Athlete.
In March 1959, the 25th World Table Tennis Championships were held in Dortmund, Germany. In the men's singles, Yung team finally competed for the crown with nine-time world champion Hungarian veteran Eysido. In response to Ai Sido's fat figure, he served both long and short, coordinated with the pull side up, increased the angle of pulling, and won three consecutive sets in the case of losing one set, defeating Ai Sido. Rong Guotuan's name was engraved on the St. Pride Cup for the first time, and he was the first Chinese sports athlete to win the world championship.
In 1959 and 1961, he was awarded the Sports Medal of Honor by the National Sports Commission twice.
In 1961, in the 26th World Table Tennis Championships, Rong Guotuan won the World Table Tennis Men's Team Championship for the first time for China.
In 1964, Rong Guotuan served as the coach of the Women's Team of the Chinese Table Tennis Team, and under his guidance and other coaches, the Chinese Women's Team won the Women's Team Championship at the 28th World Table Tennis Championships.
In 1984, he was named one of the outstanding athletes in the 35 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China.
In 2009, it was rated as one of the 100 moving Chinese since the founding of New China.
On September 25, 2019, Rong Guotuan was awarded the personal title of "The Most Beautiful Strivers".
Rong Guotuan is the pioneer of China's table tennis world, playing ball is very brainy and good at change. The balls played by Rong Guotuan in the past have content and connotations. (Comments by Zhuang Zedong)
Rong Guotuan has brought vitality to Chinese table tennis, and table tennis has taken root and sprouted in China, with deep roots and fruitful fruits, and the Chinese people have benefited deeply; At the same time, he laid the foundation of the Chinese table tennis team's "fast and accurate change" and planted the genes of The long-term prosperity of Chinese table tennis. (Guangming Daily Review)
Over the past 60 years, the spirit and soul injected by Rong Guotuan into the entire group of our Chinese table tennis team have been endless, and have been passed down to this day, and have flourished in the world table tennis arena for more than half a century, and have become a banner in the Chinese sports world. (Comments by Liu Guoliang)