Here, table tennis is restricted to youth clubs and school halls, but in China, the game is part of the fabric of daily life, writes Clifford Coonan
PING-PONG IS AS Chinese as pandas, kung fu and kung pao chicken, a sport many in the world's most populous nation begin playing even before they are old enough to see over the table top. Hunched over their bats, the cellulose ball clutched in their hands, table tennis means a way of expressing speed, agility and cunning, the qualities central to success in an increasingly competitive world.
Exercise is a central part of Chinese culture and table tennis is sure to be one of the sports in which China excels in the Beijing Olympics.
Passing through one of China's municipal parks, it's always an option to pick up a bat and challenge a stranger or just play your friends on a stone table with two struts between which you can string a net.
This concrete, if small, field of dreams is a standard fixture in most Chinese public spaces, and you can see why people love it here - ping-pong is cheap, it doesn't take up much room and is a gentle form of exercise which works for people of all ages.
I recall one time about five years ago strolling through a People's Park when a middle-aged man raised a bushy eyebrow at me, showed his teeth, then proffered a bat and ball. The gauntlet was laid and his tracksuit fluttered as he prepared for battle. My youth club training in Dublin in the 1980s had turned me into a pretty handy player, or so I thought. I picked up the bat and immediately a crowd drew around, watching the foreigner carefully, looking for the weak spots that became apparent before you could say "lao wai" or "old foreigner", the common expression for Westerners here.
Within as many seconds as it took to count out the points, I was 10-0 behind. This man in his 60s, who kept grabbing his back to show his age, and perhaps to rub in the difference between us, killed me on his serve, and returned my most dastardly back-spin serves with an ease bordering on arrogance.
Then it was 5-10. He let me win five break points in a row on his serve.
This was a face issue. He had won. But he would not humiliate me. In a strange way, this inspired me and I won several points thereafter, I genuinely believe it. He won 21-11. We shook hands.
Ping-pong first came to China in 1901 via the Western concessions around the country following the Opium Wars, a period of national humiliation from which China is still trying to recover in some ways, because the foreigner has been depicted as the evil bully out to win at all costs.
Perhaps this explains why my opponent was so happy, if graceful, in victory. And convinced that ping-pong is a Chinese invention.
In the 1960s, Chinese legends such as Zhuang Zedong and Li Furong dominated the international game. Zhuang always beat Li, it was one of the great grudge matches of the socialist era. But China did not compete in the Olympics in those days, always boycotting the Games over something or other, Russia or America or Taiwan.
But still they were a powerful ping-pong force. In the early 1960s, the Chinese used a "yin-yang" bat, which had normal rubber on one side, and long pimples on the other, becoming the first player to use a combined bat in regular play.
During the later years of Chairman Mao Zedong's rule, from 1965 until 1971, table tennis died a death, at least in international terms - ping-pong had no place in the China of the Cultural Revolution. But come the 1970s, it was back, and China made a storming return in 1971.
The Americans noticed. In 1971, the US sent a 15-member table tennis team to play China for their first ever visit to the People's Republic after nearly two decades of estrangement and hostility between the two countries.
This became the era of "ping-pong diplomacy" and Timemagazine described the visit as "the ping heard round the world". It led to the lifting of a 20-year embargo on trade with China and, ultimately, the visit by President Richard Nixon in February 1972.
Ping-pong has taken a battering from basketball, because of the success of National Basketball Assocation champ Yao Ming, but its appeal endures.
It's hard to tell whether the ping-pong fans in China's factories and parks and holiday resorts are aware of the history behind their sporting endeavours as they bow to make a serve.
They turn up with their bats in their cases, looking for a challenge, and the passersby coming from doing their tai-chi exercises are a willing audience. Maybe it's best described as ping-pong diplomacy on a local level.