I’m walk­ing through a Chinese Christian church. The wood is old but lac­quered well. Decorations line the walls: a tree made of chil­drens’ hand­prints, posters about the Almighty with slo­gans in large print, cal­en­dars and sched­ules of upcom­ing events. We head down­wards while a prayer meet­ing goes on upstairs. A young girl in Heelies skates along­side us in the hall.

We’re lead to a room with two table ten­nis tables, blue, rel­a­tively new. There isn’t much room to maneu­ver, but the light­ing is great. Shou offers us some Jasmine tea. Players are warm­ing up as more Chinese men come in one at a time. They play in sneak­ers with­out sneaker socks, or dress shirts, or those shirts with logos you get for free at a com­pany. Their shorts are an awk­ward length between capris and sports trunks.

Dan intro­duces him­self to every­one. I’m sit­ting down, try­ing to place the province of their accents. Tamarra picks up a children’s book and starts to read.

All their serves are ille­gal; they don’t throw the ball the reg­u­la­tion 6 inches straight up, which means they can put an unfair spin on the ball before it hits the pad­dle. A result of the insu­lar soci­ety they have here, where they play the same peo­ple over and over again, never ven­tur­ing out­side their reli­gious clique. They sim­ply don’t know any better.

Dan gets paired up for a match. They both play con­ser­v­a­tively when warm­ing up, try­ing to hide their tech­niques while feel­ing each other out. “Some peo­ple, when you get it in their hit zone, never miss”. Dan’s oppo­nent makes no mis­takes for him to cap­i­tal­ize on, but a con­sis­tent defence wears him out. His oppo­nent spends his energy win­ning the first game, smash­ing at every oppor­tu­nity, and loses his momen­tum. Dan wins every game for the rest of the match.

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When I read the order of play to Norm, he laughed. The first group­ing was against Hit-And-Miss, and being such an active mem­ber in the com­mu­nity, Norm knew them well. Against this team of three middle-aged, white met­ro­sex­u­als and their buddy Chinese cap­tain, we fared what can only be described as holo­caus­tic. They wore tight-fitting shirts, styl­ish tear­away pants, and had the strength, and speed to match.

Except for the Chinese guy. He had a bit of a pot belly, a bit of a scruff, and a very feared, well-balanced, pen-holders grip. And he spoke great English.

It was a plea­sure to lose to such nice guys.

I asked them about the next team we were up against, and they told us that they trashed the two lit­tle guys at the last league meet. Little guys? Kids. But I can already tell that both have improved since last month, the capain told me.

No chal­lenge for four fit men in their thir­ties plus one Chinese guy (40 give or take 10 years). A lit­tle more dif­fi­cult for me and my team­mates, Norm, a calmly pas­sion­ate Chinese guy in his 50’s, and Andrzej, a Polish man who picked up table ten­nis this year after a 40 year break, both of whom are bet­ter than I am.

I never would have believed that an 11-year-old and his seven-year-old brother could be so intim­i­dat­ing, a very FRENCH Olivier and Laurent. As cap­tain, I had the deci­sion to make as to who was play­ing first.

In table ten­nis, as with chess, the strongest player on the team is usu­ally signed to the first match so that the matches may end before the weaker play­ers have to play. Captain 1 signs the play sheet for the order of play for his team, and hands the sheet folded in half to Captain 2 so he can’t see, and use such infor­ma­tion to his advan­tage by pair­ing up oppo­nent styles against their weak­nesses. Out of five matches, there are two sin­gles at the start, a dou­bles in the mid­dle, and two more sin­gles at the end between the first sin­gles oppo­nents reversed, for best out of five matches.

Confused yet?

Before I signed the play sheet, Norm let me in on a lit­tle secret; when Olivier was 10 last year, Norm beat him in the league. Gambling that this would still hold true, and our oppo­nents would fol­low form, I put Norm first, me sec­ond, and Andrew with Norm as dou­bles. That way Norm had the best chance at beat­ing the older brother, I would have a chance at beat­ing the younger brother, they would win dou­bles, and that would be it.

Unfortunately, they decided to play the younger brother, Laurent, first. He could only see about a foot over the table, and I could tell his move­ments were strained from the height dis­ad­van­tage. He spoke no English, except for the phrase “Backhand?” dur­ing warm-ups, and “One mo!” when he was at 10 points. Sometimes he would mimic the table ten­nis pros with lit­tle grunts of sat­is­fac­tion when he got a point. Eventually, he lost to Norm gra­ciously (for a seven-year-old).

Then I was up against the Olivier, the older brother. Believing that a pair of descended tes­ti­cles to be my only advan­tage, I played with a lump in my throat, and he returned like a machine, sur­pris­ing me at every point. I could never keep him off bal­ance, or run him around the table. He just kept land­ing the ball on my side.

I lost. Then we lost at dou­bles, a tremen­dous upset. My mind was out, and I was forced to play the younger brother next. I lost again, although I won one set after Norm told me to serve to the far side of his stance (they had a time-out and eas­ily adjusted for the next set). By that time, we lost three out of five matches, and they were deter­mined to be the win­ning team, but Olivier asked to play Norm for the final match any­way. When Oliver won, he walked over and shook Norm’s hand, a look of proud accom­plish­ment on his face.

And this is what Norm loves the most. To see those younger play­ers grow up and improve and become national team players.

Thursday, I went over to Pat’s for a long-planned table ten­nis marathon. Before we started, he cooked us din­ner; rib-eye steak grilled on the bar­be­cue, a fresh veg­etable stir-fry, and bruschetta as an appe­tizer. The steak was mar­i­nat­ing all day in a gar­lic and oil sauce, and the bruschetta spread was made using extra vir­gin olive oil and basil that he grew him­self. It’s great to have a friend whose pas­sion is cook­ing and eating.

We ended up play­ing for about an hour and a half, because we ended up speak­ing for so long and I had to work the next day. Every game was close, and every best-out-of-five match went to the fifth game, with a deuce for match point dur­ing three of the five matches. He was lead­ing by one the entire time, but I adjusted my tim­ing and took less risks, and ended up win­ning the final match 12–10.

It was frus­trat­ing to be play­ing in his base­ment because I’m used to a much big­ger area with much bet­ter light­ing. The ball was hard to keep track of, and I didn’t have the same floor­ing to maneu­ver on, so it felt like my legs were glued to the ground. My toes started get­ting raw and painful about half way through, due to the fact that I usu­ally play with my weight shifted off the heel, but I was able to ignore it, con­cen­trate on play­ing, and fol­low through with a nar­row win. I real­ized that the dis­tance I stand away from the table is pro­por­tional to the dis­tance of the table to the wall. Unfortunately, this means that my tim­ing is all screwed up depend­ing on the loca­tion that I play. I need to work on being con­sis­tent in all play­ing conditions.

I played three matches yes­ter­day against three dif­fer­ent peo­ple and won all three. It felt pretty good, espe­cially since I had never played one of them before (he was a Canadian-born English teacher, work­ing in China). He also started play­ing about a year before me, and was taught in what’s con­sid­ered the table ten­nis coun­try of the world. Knowing that he was using an anti-spin rub­ber gave me an advan­tage though; I didn’t have to worry about his spin, and since I focus on speed and place­ment, his rub­ber became point­less. I also have less respect for peo­ple who use the anti-spin rub­bers, because they gen­er­ally rely on the pad­dle to do the work for them, instead of prop­erly learn­ing how to counter spin. My habit­ual ner­vous­ness when fac­ing a new oppo­nent wasn’t there.

I also won against one of the peo­ple I use to have great dif­fi­culty beat­ing. He had a new pad­dle, with small ball-bearings imbed­ded along the rim. When one shakes it, the pad­dle sounds like a baby rat­tle. Apparently, it’s sup­posed to pre­vent rever­ber­a­tion, but I don’t under­stand the point. I count on feel­ing rever­ber­a­tion through my han­dle to give me feed­back on where I’m hitting.

I also beat one of my long time oppo­nents, although it’s more of an empty vic­tory because I’ve learned his tricks and styles, so I know how to counter them. I won based on vital­lity over­com­ing his expe­ri­ence, not skill over­com­ing skill. It was inter­est­ing to find out that his pad­dle has a hol­low han­dle with a weight attached to a screw assem­bly in it. The weight can be shifted up and down through the han­dle to change the cen­tre of grav­ity of the blade.

Still, it’s good to know that I’m improv­ing. I can learn at the table now, in the mid­dle of a match instead of afterwards.

I ended up los­ing all my matches yes­ter­day. Out of 18 games, I won three. Two matches should have been easy wins, and one was tied at 2 games, 12 points. I get too ner­vous when I’m play­ing new peo­ple. I’m not quite used to the entire idea of com­pet­ing, espe­cially for rank, espe­cially with other peo­ple depend­ing on me. My team­mates told me that it was notice­ably affect­ing my per­for­mance because it seemed as if my shoul­ders were stiff and I was try­ing too hard. I’ll be accus­tomed to every­thing eventually.