Click here to see the New Year greetings from the national team. Top one is from Zai Zhenhua: "The members of the Chinese National Team will aim for faster, higher and stronger, in spirits and in action, to show its appreciation for our countrymen who have given us their support and love. Wishing you a happy new year, and may your wishes come true." Nice handwriting.
The second one is from Ma Lin: "Wishing everyone a happy holiday season."
The third one is from Wang Liqin: "Happy Holiday to all the friends on the internet."
Click here for the photos of Cai and Wang writing the greetings.
Click here for photos of the team members giving greetings to fans.
Click here for a photo study of Ma's techniques. Kim serves to Ma's backhand small traingle. Ma steps around to return with his forehand. This is a high quality push that forces Kim to reach with his right foot to return. Kim's return was not very good, and Ma punishes it with his powerful forehand from the backhand position, sending a strong loop to Kim's forehand and winning the point. Ma demonstrates the Chinese superior short ball techniques here.
The Chinese Super League will start again after the Chinese New Year holidays. Chen Jing will be training at a Guangzhou club during the holidays to prepare for her team's next match against Tianjin, led by Li Nan.
Since joining the Guangdong club, Chen gave up the chance to defend her ITTF Pro Tour Grand Final title. She took care of some business in Taiwan, and then arrived in Guangzhou last week. Her team will play Tianjin on January 31. She will train daily at her club, the Chen Jing Table Tennis Club, with ex-national team member Xiong Ke. She has invited fans to watch her training sessions, starting at 3 pm every day, during the holidays.
(Chung's notes: Guangzhou, formerly Canton, is the capital city of Guangzhou province. Chen Jing joined the Guangzhou team late last year, and just now received permission from the league to play for her team in the remaining matches of this season. Chen Jing has also opened a brand new table tennis club, named after herself, in Guangzhou.)
Recently there is a new ITTF bill being discussed. It will reduce the number of doubles pairs eligible to represent a country at the Athens Olympics to one, in each doubles event. The ITTF committee deliberated on this issue during the Pro Tour Grand Finals. Those in favor of it believe that it will increase participation from more countries and distribute the medals more widely. But it also brings out the concern that the level of play will decrease, and the viewability of the sport will ultimately suffer, which will then impede the progress of table tennis.
CTTA official Li told reporters that in the last decades, the ITTF has changed the rules many times. Overall these changes benefited the sport, and introduced parity among countries. Some of the changes helped the Chinese, an example of which is the rule that prevents players from different associations to form a doubles team. Other changes, for example the 2-color rule, have hurt the Chinese. Also the changes were not limited to technical areas. In the 1961 Worlds, each country could send up to 32 men and 32 women. Now those numbers have been reduced to 7.
The Chinese have taken a leading position in the sport. So, in a certain sense, this new bill is aimed at the Chinese. Chinese national sports official Yang told reporters: "If we reduce the level of play because we want to spread out the medals more evenly among countries, our sport will lose its essense, its fans, and its market." He pointed out the Olympic ideal is "faster, higher, stronger", so we should make our sport better and more attractive.
Another Chinese official pointed this out: "We should objectively analyse the bill's effects. The Olympics is the highest level of competition. Limiting the number of doubles players from a country will limit the opportunities of the Chinese players, on one hand. On the other hand, it will also limit the number of players who could challenge the Chinese."
Whether the bill passes or not, the CTTA has opened the doors. It is willing to help improve the development of the sport worldwide. The ETTA will send a team, consisting of the best women players in Europe, to play in league matches in China. The CTTA will unconditionally help train the Europeans to raise their levels.