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.

Tamarra laughs and tells me, “In this book, it says that humans were cre­at­ed to wor­ship God”. I take the book from her and read a pas­sage.

“God was very hap­py with all he cre­at­ed, but he felt cre­ation still was­n’t quite com­plete. Although every­thing he cre­at­ed so far was per­fect in every way, there was no crea­ture with a mind to think and rea­son and there­fore no one to wor­ship the God who was the cre­ator.”

“Is that when he made peo­ple?”

“Yes. First he cre­at­ed Adam…”

They all use pen­hold­er grips, rem­nants of the old school style of aggres­sive Chinese play. Only the three of us — Dan, Tamarra, and myself — use shake­hands.

I’m up. The first time I’ve played since last year. My oppo­nent is stocky with a square head and reced­ing hair­line, remind­ing me of an uncle from my child­hood. His game is the same as mine; a pow­er fore­hand that tries to force the oppo­nent into a weak push as a set­up for a fin­ish­ing smash. Except his is bet­ter. I try to land the ball along his body¹, but end up mak­ing more errors than he does, cost­ing me three games in a row. Still, I pull off a few ral­lies to be proud of — con­sis­tent­ly plac­ing the ball exact­ly where I want it and run­ning him around — and fin­ish feel­ing sat­is­fied.

For the rest of the night, Dan wins all his match­es. They ask him why he switch­es the pad­dle from hand-to-hand², and he tells them he’s try­ing to prac­tice. They’re not used to this gwai lo beat­ing them, or his psy­cho­log­i­cal tech­niques, so they wel­come him back any Friday or Sunday. Maybe for a chance to beat him, or a chance to improve.

I leave, won­der­ing whether these men are here for God, or the table ten­nis, or both.

1. A weak spot for pen­hold­er grips [↩]
2. Dan has the abil­i­ty to throw the pad­dle from his right hand to his left so that he can smash with a bet­ter angle. [↩]