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World Table Tennis Championships, Ding Ning defended the women's singles championship, Xu Xin Fan Zhendong reached the top of the men's doubles. However, the most popular ones are "table tennis prodigy" Zhang Benzhi and .
Two days ago, 13-year-old Tomokazu Harimoto defeated the Japanese brother Mizutani Hayabusa and squeezed into the quarterfinals. His next goal is: to win the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. Tomokazu Harimoto owes his talent to his family. His parents were both Chinese table tennis players. His mother, Zhang Ling, also played alongside Deng Yaping and Qiao Hong, and participated in the 1995 Tianjin World Table Tennis Championships.
With the trend of "naturalizing Japan", a large number of national players have coached or played in Japanese clubs, contributing to the overall improvement of Japanese table tennis level. For example, national table tennis team leader Huang Biao, women's team coach Yan Sen, Olympic champion Qiao Hong, and Chen Longcan have all played in the Japanese league. Two coaches of Ai Fukuhara, Liu Yang and Tang Yuanyuan, are now the first sisters of Japanese women's table tennis. Ishikawa Kasumi ’s coach Chen Lili is also Chinese.
Among them, there are not only those who work as coaches, those who work as sparring partners, those who work as players, and there are even hourly workers who work as sparring partners for the elderly. It’s time to talk about the “drifting generation” of Chinese table tennis in Japan. How are these Chinese table tennis players living in Japan, thousands of miles away, doing well? Are they happy in Japan?
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Let’s first look at the story of Zhang Benzhihe, a result of “Made in Chengdu”.
Zhang Benzhihe's original name is Zhang Zhihe . His parents Zhang Yu and Zhang Ling went to a table tennis club in Sendai, Japan as a coach in 1998. Tomokazu Hari was born in 2003. When he was 2 years old, he started to touch the ball in the club while wearing diapers.
's father Zhang Yu has always insisted on learning Chinese for his son, and even brought Pinyin teaching materials from China. This child prodigy can also speak a few words in Sichuan dialect. In order for Zhang Benzhihe to be eligible to participate in adult international competitions, Zhang Yu officially naturalized his nationality to Japan when Zhang Benzhihe was 10 years old. In the name column, Zhang Yu added the character "Ben" to his son's Chinese name. Because Zhang Yu wanted to serve as his son's coach for the national team, he also chose to become a Japanese national. It had been 16 years since he settled in Japan, while his mother Zhang Ling still retained Chinese nationality.
Zhang Yu said that giving his son a "origin" in his name was to show that his family has not forgotten its roots.
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Talent and environment, at the age of 13, Tomokazu Harimoto became the youngest men's singles champion in the World Youth Championship in history. As a result, he has become the subject of the most attention from the Japanese media. The Japanese NHK TV crew once filmed a documentary about the "table tennis prodigy" for him. At the 2015 Polish Open, NHK sent three television reporters to follow the entire event.
However, the life of the "table tennis prodigy" who enjoys star treatment is not easy. After Zhang Benzhi came to Japan with his parents, he only worked as a coach in a table tennis hall. The monthly income of the two is only more than 20,000 yuan, which is very ordinary in Japan. A family of four rarely goes out to eat out. Most of the time, the mother Zhang Ling cooks at home. Occasionally, the arena does not have enough food to order. , Zhang Ling would take her sister home and make dumplings to eat.
At the end of 2015, Tencent Sports visited Tomokazu Harimoto’s family in Sendai. At that time, the family was still committed to coaching in a local gym. At this time, 20 years had passed since Zhang Yu and his wife came to Japan. The monthly income of the two of them is only more than 20,000 yuan. In Japan, this kind of income is very ordinary, and their lives are not comfortable.
It was not until last year that the owner who originally ran the venue stopped operating it, so the family took over the contract. Now his father, Zhang Yu, is training and going to school in Tokyo with Tomowa, while his mother, Zhang Ling, lives in Sendai with her younger sister Miwa, running the arena and living a very hard life.
Before he became a Japanese national and did not have the conditions to participate in international adult competitions, Tomokazu Hari trained in the arena where his parents were coaches. The level of the arena is only equivalent to that of domestic amateur sports schools. The best players in the arena are no longer rivals of Tomokazu Harimoto. Parents who are busy with work have no time to give too much guidance. Tomokazu Harimoto, who is in the best period of his rise, can only It is a state of "self-taught without a teacher".
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National Table Tennis Head Coach Liu Guoliang once talked about the phenomenon of Zhang Benzhihe, "Because Zhang Ling and others have been in the national team and have a deep understanding of table tennis. There is a strong table tennis atmosphere at home, and parents' hopes are placed on their children. This is understandable. . We should encourage players like Zhang Zhihe. It is really difficult for them. If his parents are world champions in the Chinese team, they may not immigrate to Japan, but because the national table tennis is too strong in Chinese soil. It is too difficult for them to develop.”
In fact, it is not difficult for them in Japan.
The bond between Zhang Benzhi and his family is not only the family's financial constraints, but also the mental pressure from the outside world. At the same time, almost all the "drifting generation" in Japan were like this. In China, there were accusations of being a "traitor"; in Japan, they were scolded as "go back to China."
In the previous All Japan Open, Tomokazu Harimoto lost to 17-year-old high school sophomore Haruki Miyamoto 2:3 in the youth group competition. This made the Japanese people shout "go back to China" angrily, and Tomokazu Harimoto also cried in pain because of the loss. Before
, there was also such news in China. Zhang Benzhihe came to Shanghai Cao Yanhua Table Tennis School to "play the gym", and the result was "1 win and 7 losses." During the two days of the World Table Tennis Championships, his father Zhang Yu said helplessly in an interview with Sina Sports: "There are many unfriendly and unpleasant articles on the Internet, saying that my son went to Shanghai to play gymnasium and so on. I have never been to that arena in Shanghai and I don’t know where it is.” Zhang Benzhihe himself also said, “It’s definitely not me.”
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This is the mental journey that Chinese table tennis players must go through when choosing Japan. Even Wei Qingguang, who was once the number one male table tennis player in Japan and served as the coach of the Japanese men's team, was not immune.
Wei Qingguang is well-known. He partnered with Chen Longcan to win China's first men's doubles gold medal in table tennis at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. This is China's first gold medal in table tennis at the Olympics. In 1990, Wei Qingguang retired and went to Japan to play basketball the following year.
participated in the All-Japan Table Tennis Championships for the first time. Wei Qingguang's opponent in the final was Gao Zhiliang, a former member of the Beijing team. After playing 5 games, Wei Qingguang came back to win in the deciding game and won the men's singles championship. The game was much harder and more intense than expected. After the game, he had tears in his eyes and was incoherent in front of the TV cameras.
This bonding emotion is clearly revealed in the two memories of Wei Qingguang's wife:
We are grateful from the bottom of our hearts to our motherland and to the Chinese table tennis team that trained Qingguang back then. This is a completely natural feeling that comes from the heart. Just like the dissatisfaction and complaints about the status quo back then, they are real. On the road to the gymnasium, there are old but star-studded dormitories and table tennis training halls; the sweat and laughter spilled there; the struggle and glory there are recorded, together with the egg pancakes and wonton stalls outside the gate, traveling to all corners of the world, and never forgotten . When I applied for nationality, I was much more active than Qingguang. I ran around trying to get a Japanese passport so that I could buy a house, travel, and work. Like many Chinese in Japan, we worked hard and gained a foothold before choosing to become Japanese nationals. But why did he suddenly look like a Japanese devil?
html In April 2098, we moved from Kikuyo to Kumamoto City. The two-story small bungalow has dark coffee and light gray exterior walls. There is a parking lot in front of the door. There is a water supply road to the north. For most of the year, water flows down from the upstream to irrigate the paddy fields somewhere. Facing south, a narrow open space is left, which can barely be called a garden. With a stubborn nostalgia, I planted two osmanthus trees. I was born in Guilin, the season when sweet-scented osmanthus is fragrant.
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At the 1998 Asian Table Tennis Championships, Wei Qingguang represented Japan. When I met my former Chinese teammates, both of them felt awkward. At the scene, Wei Qingguang also encountered a chorus of "Japanese Wei Qingguang's family is chattering!"
But under such circumstances, Wei Qingguang first defeated Ma Lin, and then defeated Liu Guoliang, winning the men's singles silver medal for the Japanese team that had not won it for more than ten years.
came to Japan to survive, and played well to regain respect in Japan. This is the painful struggle of Japan’s “drift generation”.
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In the 1994 Hiroshima Asian Games, He Zhili defeated Deng Yaping to win the women's singles championship. With dissatisfaction with the Chinese team's "handicap" requirement, He Zhili shouted "Yo Xi" every time he won a ball.
This incident has caused a huge storm in China. In addition to sports newspapers, a number of cultural media such as "Beijing Youth Daily" and even "Wenhui Reading Weekly" have all participated in the debate about "whether He Zhili is a traitor." "Yangcheng Evening News" Su Shaoquan published two articles in a row "What's so good about it?" ", "The motherland trained her, but she forgot the motherland", denounced He Zhili as "Wu Sangui in the arena".
At that time, four flight attendants from China Southern Airlines who had just got off work were vying for words on the phone hotline, "Such a person will not end well, and they will definitely be abandoned by their husbands in the future." What's even worse is that after getting off work, When it was known that He Zhili was going back to China to play in the competition, someone wrote to He Zhili's parents, asking her parents to tell He Zhili not to come to the competition in Tianjin, otherwise there would be "no return".
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Today, the 53-year-old He Zhili is not living a happy life. Because she could not bear the domestic violence and extramarital affairs, she divorced her ex-husband and former sparring partner Hideyuki Koyama. She suffered a major physical and mental blow. She hated the national table tennis team and hated men, because it was the national table tennis team's handicap policy that forced her to leave her hometown and become a "traitor"; it was Hideyuki Koyama's extramarital affair that prevented her from living a happy life. Family life.
Although the Japanese table tennis team contacted He Zhili as a coach in the past, they will never contact her again because they think she may be suffering from a disease such as autism, and she has been living in isolation for a long time, and her tactical concepts have long been outdated. He Zhili previously taught at the Ikeda Bank Club, but due to the economic downturn, the club also disbanded.
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In addition to the great psychological changes, there are also language and cultural barriers between China and Japan.
Wang Rui is the coach of China's great rival Miu Hirano who defeated Ding Ning, Zhu Yuling and Chen Meng. He once played in the Hebei Provincial Team and was a member of the same team as Ma Lin. After naturalizing in Japan, he changed his name to "Nakazawa Rui".
In 2015, Wang Rui entered the Japan Table Tennis Association and began to take over Hirano Miu. As her head coach, Wang Rui not only has to guide Hirano Miu's techniques, but also maintains daily communication with her and serves as her psychological guidance. But the problem lies in communication. "After 10 years, my colleagues and friends still point out that my Japanese is not good enough. When teaching football, if the language is not enough, I can pick up the racket and make gestures myself, but in daily life It’s very inconvenient to have a conversation.”
Wang Rui said that he was also helpless.
Zhang Cheng, who took over the star of hope Hirano Miu from Wang Rui, is also the focus of attention from the outside world. Zhang Cheng was once in the national training team with Fan Zhendong. Three years ago, Zhang Cheng went to Japan and became a member of the Japanese national team after failing to be selected for the second national team.
He once admitted in an interview that there was a huge psychological gap at that time.
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In the common understanding of Chinese people, those who move to Japan to become coaches do so for the high salary. Compared with the monthly salary of several thousand yuan in the provincial team, the annual salary of 200,000 yuan offered by the Japan Table Tennis Association for a sparring partner is indeed very tempting.
But in fact, such 200,000 can only be controlled by top-level athletes. Table tennis players of average level can only go to Japanese homes to work as table tennis partners.
Hunan Daily once published a self-narrative by Wang Enliang "I was a sparring partner in Japan". He wrote in it that his friend Awei had opened an agency company in Japan that specifically served Japanese people, and he had worked as a sparring partner for many Japanese table tennis enthusiasts in this company. This kind of sparring is not for improving skills, it is just a service. When playing, you just need to do a good job of defense without conceding the ball.
As for the fee, for one hour of sparring, you can get 45 US dollars, but the sparring partner can only get two-thirds, and the remaining part must be given to the company as an agency fee. After mastering the skills, a sparring partner can visit up to 6 houses a day, and at least 3 houses at a time.
Compared with top sparring partners, ordinary people earn nothing more than their own "hard-earned money".
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The quality of life is average, and there is no hope of becoming famous. The "drift generation" in Japan sometimes want to escape.
In 1998, Shanghai table tennis player Dong Qimin chose to go to Japan to develop and work as a coach for the local table tennis club. Now he lives in Gifu, in central Japan.
His wife Zheng Qi has become a Japanese citizen. Dong Qimin, who was also eligible to become a Japanese citizen, is unwilling to give up his Chinese passport. He feels that "fallen leaves must return to their roots." Although life is normal now, Dong Qimin Min said, "If the Japanese government announces the spread of nuclear radiation, we will consider returning to Shanghai."
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Qiao Hong is the one who chose to come back.
Olympic champion Qiao Hong came to Japan after officially quitting the national team in 1996. In 1998, she renewed her one-year contract with Panasonic Corporation of Japan and served as a player and coach of the Panasonic Electric Team. But in 2000, Qiao Hong chose to return to China and served as a coach for the national team in 2003, coaching Wang Nan , Niu Jianfeng , etc. After the Beijing Olympics, Qiao Hong officially took up the position of director of the Guangdong Table Tennis Management Center.
Qiao Hong is a little different. In an interview with "Life Times" in 1998, Qiao Hong said that in the past, she was pushed to play and she had no choice. "So, I was really tired from playing at that time." "Maybe I was afraid of hardship. Maybe it’s because I don’t have great ambitions. I think everyone has their own way of living.” "There are many people engaged in table tennis in our country. I just want to do something I like and be happy." Qiao Hong, 30 years old at the time, was still single.
In 2001, a reporter from "Tianjin Daily" met Qiao Hong in Japan. "While drinking coffee with Lu Yuansheng, deputy head coach of the Chinese table tennis team, in the lounge, a girl in sportswear came over to say hello enthusiastically. It turned out to be a former world champion. Qiao Hong. Lu Yuansheng smiled and said to the reporter, this time you have something to say, I will call your report "Meet Qiao Hong Again". Qiao Hong also showed her Chinese passport to the reporter. She didn't want to stay abroad, and she refused several countries that offered her a place to settle.
At that time, Qiao Hong had already solved her personal problems. "Qiao Hong took out a photo from the wallet containing her passport and showed it to reporters, and then told her to keep it secret."
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Now, she still chooses to fight in Japan. Wei Qingguang is considered the best in Japan. 2017 is the 26th year that Wei Qingguang and his wife Shi Xiaojuan came to Japan. Their 23-year-old son also graduated from Inada University and entered the employment of the famous Japanese company "Quan Nong".
As the first Chinese table tennis Olympic champion to go to Japan, he owns his own sporting goods company in Japan. After leaving the national team, he also served as a coach at Yamada Academy in Aomori, Japan. The most popular Ai Fukuhara and Kasumi Ishikawa, Kenta Matsuda who almost defeated Ma Lin, and the 14-year-old youngster Niwa Takaki all came from this academy.
In Tokyo, Wei Qingguang owns three or four arenas with more than 100 square meters. There will be Wei Qingguang's column in Japan's "Zhuoqiu Kingdom" magazine every month to promote his teaching philosophy.
When Wei Qingguang, who has been an athlete for 30 years, announced that he would retire, nearly a hundred of his former teammates and coaches came from all over China and Japan. From Japan, former world men's singles champion Shigeo Ito, famous players Takao Nohira, Masahiro Maehara, Japanese men's team coach Yoshihito Miyazaki and national player Koji Matsushita all attended the party. The Chinese team members also brought a video of Xu Yinsheng, who once served as chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association.
This is exactly what a table tennis player wandering in Japan would ideally look like, but Wei Qingguang doesn't think so. He said, "I don't have the ability. Look, Qiao Hong and the others are now directors after returning to China."
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