Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
You're listening to Roundtable with myself, He Yang.
I'm joined by Steve and Guo Yan in the studio.
Guo Yan, well, if you're not on Roundtable, where can folks follow you on air or on social media for your reporting and wonderful insights?
The Beijing Hour. You can tune in to the Beijing Hour, also on the same frequency with this roundtable.
Awesome. And it's always good to look at your video reports, which I do from time to time.
And I know you've been reporting on electric vehicles and new tech startups in China.
And also cultural stories.
And also cultural stories.
And you might even catch her doing a couple of dance numbers from time to time.
You can follow me on my Facebook page.
And what's your handle?
Victoria? Yeah, Victoria Guo Yan.
And there you go. So just look up Guo Yan and you'll find her on social media.
Coming up on today's show, it's fast, it's fun, and it doesn't take up too much space.
No wonder ping pong is winning over a new generation of casual players, especially among busy urban professionals.
Whether it's signing up for evening classes or squeezing in a quick game with friends, we look at how table tennis is becoming the new go -to workout for city folks across China.
And you refresh your ticket -booking app, pick up or pick out your high -speed train, and seat F is already gone.
every single time. What is going on?
Today we dive into the mystery of 2025's most wanted seat and find out if switching to it is really worth the chase.
Our podcast listeners can find us at Roundtable China on Apple Podcast. From the world of entertainment to what fuels your passion, our heart -to -heart segment is all about you.
Share your thoughts with us at roundtablepodcast at QQ .com or better yet, record a voice memo.
We'd love to hear your voice and share it with the world.
Now let's move on to the next topic discussion today.
Call it table tennis or ping pong.
This little white ball has long bounced its way into the hearts of millions of Chinese people as an unofficial national sport.
In fact, a 2024 estimate by Beijing Daily says over 83 million people in China play ping pong at least twice a week.
Wow. And that's about the entire population of Germany.
Wow, again. Yeah, the numbers in China, huh?
And it's not just kids anymore.
Urban office workers are grabbing petals and squeezing in spin serves after work.
So what's fueling this ping pong fever and why are more grown -ups joining in on the fun?
Let's start with just how big this fever is.
Are we talking about a casual hit here and there?
How intense is table tennis training these days?
Well as summer break arrives in China, a booming sport training training enrollments, ping pong in particular, is currently underway.
This isn't just a small increase.
Training programs are seeing thousands of applicants for a handful of sports spots.
And take the recent ping pong masterclass launched by a few former national team athletes, for example.
They initially planned for 80 to 90 students, but in just three days, They got over 2 ,800 applicants for only 45 to 50 available tables, resulting in an acceptance rate of less than 10 percent.
Easier to get into some universities than it is to a ping pong master class.
That's pretty awesome, though.
I mean, if you're lucky enough to get one of those seats or one of those positions, that's amazing.
Launched by former national team athletes.
So if you want a coach, that's about as good as you can possibly get, I would think.
Yeah. And when we talk about ping pong training, this is not some casual training like my dad's teaching me how to play ping pong.
It's more like, oh, you're actually spending money on this.
There's a schedule and you go to have a professional coach to teach you.
You take it seriously.
Yeah. Of those people that you just talked about, those twenty eight hundred applications, those are mainly teenagers, teenagers, maybe 18 or under, but it does show that there's kind of an unexpected and maybe huge demand for professional training.
But that being said, there's also a demand from white -collar workers working in cities, and it's kind of a new ping -pong demographic that they're forming here.
Yes, of course, youth training still does dominate, but yeah, the trend is growing among among professionals who are signing up not just for casual fun, but they're signing up for some serious training.
And they're asking about private coaching and table standards.
And they're joining youth camps to improve as well, which is awesome.
Some companies are even adding ping pong tables to their offices.
They're turning their workspaces into makeshift arenas.
And in our building, too, here on one particular floor, there's ping pong tables.
When I started working here, I heard the sound right ping pong ping pong and I thought where's that coming from and I walked around a corner and there's some tables there and no word of a lie I thought it was a training center for like the national team or something I asked I asked you should one of our family members here on roundtable I said is that a training center for like a high -level team he said oh no those people just work here he said why did you think that I said because they're really good they look like they're really really good but they're just kind of employees of the company using
some time off to have some fun i guess i think that's why um that's because a lot of our colleagues started training session when they are in primary school and they are good in adulthood yeah yeah they certainly are you used to take part in this building did you not a few years ago i used to play on that table a few years ago and i think it's a great way to get relaxed after a day's work how about you hyung have you ever played there on the first floor never never i don't know why i never get a chance to do so but it is true uh guo yan mentioned that for many chinese people when we went to elementary
school and there are some extracurricular activities you can sign up or a sport you can sign up and it's super natural it feels for a lot of chinese people to yeah i'll give it a try like it's like almost like part of i wouldn't go as far as saying national identity but it's like national sport yeah it's like it's just so common everywhere it's like ice hockey in canada right um but the difference is you will see a rink a rink takes up a lot of space right you'll see those around communities but ping pong tables based on my one year experience of living here in China you see them in unexpected
places I was walking along one of the one of the canals that runs through one of the water canals that runs through downtown Beijing and people were swimming there and next to where they were swimming there were ping pong tables set up the Liang Man River I don't know where I was but anyway they were swimming and playing ping pong in their bathing suits.
I thought, this is genius.
And then there's a park right next to our workplace here.
And you walk through the park, and then all of a sudden there's this little exercise area, and there's four ping pong tables where the grandmas and grandpas play on a daily basis.
My wife and I joined one time.
We played. Not with them, but we played alongside them.
They're beyond our skill level.
You're no rival for them.
Not yet. Well, yeah, it's highly possible.
There are a lot of these, I don't really want to say hidden tiger crouching dragons, but in the world of ping pong, you know, because so many people are so good in China.
And then they could just be, they look like an average, you know, grandma, grandpa, but just give her or him a paddle, hidden dragon crouching tigers.
They will, they will, they will show you how ping pong is being played.
Do you remember Ni Xia Lian?
Ni Xia Lian, the table tennis player.
She represented Luxembourg to play in the Summer Olympics, and she's in her 60s.
She still represented her national team because she moved to Luxembourg.
She used to be an athlete in the 1980s, I remember, for the Chinese national team.
But after she moved to Luxembourg, she became almost a hit in that country, even in some neighboring European countries.
They hired her to train young athletes in ping pong.
That is pretty common in a few national teams around the world.
Because the Chinese table tennis national team is just so competitive.
competitive it's got so many people playing and the threshold of getting into the national league is so difficult and therefore actually there are a lot of table tennis talent who might not be able to make the cut in china who would be number one ranked in maybe every other country around the world sort of like that yeah kind of like that back to these programs quickly um they're not that expensive and that might be why they're really popular with office workers and adult players as well for example um in hangzhou that's in xiang province it costs about 25 to 75 yuan that's about three to ten
dollars per hour um so you can rent that way or or take your lessons that way um and then you can get an unlimited play memberships as well which will obviously cost you more but i think the affordability too is part of the reason for the popularity yeah well Well, what do you think sort of fuels this interest for especially, you know, exhausted office workers, which we talk about so much on this show, but after work, they're willing to go play ping pong.
And, you know, what do you think is generating their interest here?
Well, I think it's just a way for relaxing after days of arduous work.
And And you should find a way to get relaxed and maybe to, I think it's also a great way for us to build a relationship, to, you know, to make friends, to meet new people.
Sure, but you could say that about the gym.
You could say that about a cycling club.
You could say that about a lot of different things.
But I think perhaps you can look to the Olympics as why it might have become more popular with adults coming out of the office in the evening.
If you look at the Paris Olympics, for example, that attracted massive online and offline attention.
Then you've got other events like the World Table Tennis Series, the WTT.
You've got the China Super League matches that have maintained, managed to maintain their public interest, which is really challenging to do for different sports, maintaining that public interest for a really long time.
And when you see success and when we look at ping pong or table tennis and the Chinese national team in the Olympics, it's it's it's the pure definition of success.
And when you see that, it inspires people to get more involved.
I remember Kim Yeon -ho.
Kim Yeon -ho was a Korean figure skater and she was she was phenomenal.
Yeah. She was she was the best in the world.
Right. And that inspired so many young Korean people to become involved in figure skating.
And it just changed how people looked at that as a hobby, not necessarily looking to go to the Olympics, but just it generated so much interest in the sport.
I think that's what the Olympics can do in general, but maybe part of the reason that office workers have been inspired.
Well, interesting. I think with ping pong, it's actually one of the very rare examples you can see, oh, this is a virtuous or positive cycle.
On the one hand, you have, well, I just cited that number, 83 million Chinese people who play ping pong twice a week.
So you've got a lot of people playing.
And then on the other hand, the other end of the positive cycle being that, you know, you're achieving great success in all kinds of international tournaments.
Also creating generation after generation of tennis, table tennis superstars from Rong Guo Tuan to Deng Ya Ping to Ma Long to Fan Zhendong to Sun Ying Sha and Sha Sha is like a magic word that gets a lot of people crazy, you know, just right on the spot.
And then, you know, so this is one of those really positive examples in sports in this country where you see, oh, this is how the sport can be commercialized, how it already comes with almost like a built in audience, but a growing fan base and how it can expand into such a huge area of interest for different parties.
and football would be the very opposite example of this which will not go into great depth well i mean to use continued success as kind of a a measurement for public interest in a sport they say in korea that if the national football team is doing well then the interest in football on a on a pro level within the country is high the national team doesn't do well then no the interest isn't there, but this is from ESPN and AP, China, okay, so the Seoul Olympics back in 1988, that's when table tennis was introduced to the Olympics at that time, since then, China has won, get this statistic, 37 of the 42
gold medals since it was introduced in 1988, my point, which is incredible, it's almost 90%, but my point is that it's been continued national level success which allows the sport to have that continued grassroots level popularity.
And many ping pong fans have followed a similar path online under the training hashtag, the adult table tennis training.
I found this trend on social media recently.
It has over 3 million views.
People are actively discussing how to find venues, playing partners and coaches, and I think the power of social media have also fostered this popularity of table tennis among young people, I guess.
Oh, definitely. And this is one of the areas where you see that there's the sports celebrity effect for sure.
And it's generated interest generation after generation.
And it's been decades and decades too, right?
Because it goes back to the 1950s when it was really promoted as a sport for everyone here in the country.
Yes, indeed. And it was in 1959 when Rong Guo Tuan was the first person who actually won a global competition, and of course, in ping pong.
And then that was even before Xu Haifeng, that's another, well, it's a name you would read in Chinese textbooks, but actually, in ping pong is actually where it all sort of blossomed.
And yeah, it's a piece of trivia that might be of interest to you.
And all of that being said, what are some of the possible challenges that despite this market being booming as it is, but it's facing at the same time?
Well, I think it's the quality disparity in training.
The rapid growth in sports training has led to a variety of training providers, but the quality of these services remains inconsistent.
Well, some is able to hire star athlete as coach or better run by former athlete themselves.
What about the rest?
What about the rest of such private institutions?
Can they maintain a standardized training methods?
That is a problem that's haunting the minds of some fans of this sport.
And also the market fragmentation, the sports training market in China is still in its early stages and remains highly fragmented.
While there are numerous entrants, many small scale institutions like effective management, making the market less concentrated.
And this results in challenges in achieving national expansion or managing multiple sports categories.
Yes, indeed. So to overcome these challenges, actually, I think the companies, organizations, they need to sort of get better into addressing the grievances and demands of a new generation of people who hope to get better in ping pong, but really it's to have some fun and to stay active, that kind of thing.
Coming up, we will bring you the last topic discussion today, and we venture into the curious case of seat F on China's high -speed rail.
Well, have you ever tried booking a seat on the Chinese high -speed rail app, only to find seat F is always fully booked?
And you're not alone.
Lately, the F seat has become the hottest ticket on the tracks.
So, let's dig into the hype.
What makes the F seat so popular?
So, on a train, we need to know how it's situated, right?
It's the three plus two arrangement.
So, you've got three seats together on one side, then you've got two on the other, and on the other are the A and F seats.
Those are always the most coveted seats because the B is the middle seat, and C and D constitute the aisle seats.
So the F -seat is the one that everybody wants and it's the one that nobody seemingly can get because the latest data from China's railway authorities show that the F -seats on high -speed trains had an average booking rate of 89 % in the second quarter of this year.
and on July 1st, which was the first day of the 2025 summer travel rush, all the F -seats on the G1 Beijing to Shanghai high -speed train sold out within 15 minutes of ticket release.
It's the seat that everybody wants.
Yeah, the window seats.
Everybody wants window seats.
And because the F -seat or the window, I would prefer to call it the window seat.
It holds a unique advantage as the only right -side single window seat.
in second class seats.
And this offers passengers an unobstructed view without sharing a window with another person, reducing social pressure as you only have one immediate neighbor.
Don't have to talk to anybody.
Yeah, there's only one person sitting next to you, right?
So that makes it more convenient too, because if you think about if you have the window seat on the other side, which is also good, right?
But you have two people sitting next to you.
So getting Getting up and getting out, if you need to go to the washroom or something like that on the train, it just makes it a little less convenient.
That's why that F -seat, the other window seat, is the golden prize.
Oh, yes, it is. And, well, browsing through online discussions, you'll find young travelers calling the F -seat their emotional escape on high -speed trails.
males uh but what is it about the f seat that offers such comfort for these people i think it's the convenience first of all well as a person who's only taken the train a few times i've tried to get it every single time and i've failed every single time um business travelers have said they see it like almost a little bit like an office space because you only have one person next to you and you have you have a little bit more space over there too oh speaking of people working on the on the train I I'm that kind of person I have to sometimes I have to write stories I have to write articles during this travel
time so that's why I choose this F seat as my priority and we only have like two seconds for this but let's get it in can I switch my seat to F if possible if there's availability well it's what everybody wants to do right but can you switch it or not.
I've tried every single...
I can't say yes or no, but I've tried every single time and I've had zero success doing that.
What happened to you?
I'm so lucky since you have said that you can snatch an F -seat, but I always could secure an F -seat whenever I travel.
And it depends on when you do it because if you do it too late and even if it's available, you might need to pay an extra fee and you don't necessarily want that.
Yeah, well, that's all the things you probably probably need to know to secure an FC and try your luck.
Thank you so much, Steve and Guoyen for joining the discussion.
I'm He Yang. You can always find us on Apple podcast at Round Table China.
We'll see you next time.
