Ping-pong diplomacy

Wang was sent abroad for the first time by Chinese authorities as part of the country's ping-pong diplomacy in the 1970s, not to the United States but to developing countries like Somalia, Chile and Ecuador. He helped some players win championships in South America.

After that, Wang took an interest in intercultural exchange and helped set up a pioneering international ping-pong club in Beijing, which hosted 20 nationalities in the late 1980s.

But Wang felt there was more to do, and he ended up in Belgium. In 2001, Wang and his Belgian team witnessed a milestone in Belgian's table tennis history: The national team qualified for the final of men's table tennis in the team competition at the 46th world championships.

On the podium, however, Wang sang the Chinese national anthem. He later explained to his Belgian teammates that he was the Belgian team's coach but he is Chinese, and everything he had learned about table tennis was from China. Without it, he could not have climbed up the social ladder from a working class family.

Ping-pong has been Wang's lifelong career, but he also sees it as a platform for intercultural communications and exchanges. The sport breaks boundaries of body types and gender, it is not expensive and it exercises both the mind and body. It is a grassroots sport that you can play until you die.

"State-to-state relations thrive when there is friendship between the people," Wang says. He recently sent one of his best "Belgian disciples", 14-year-old Lindsay de Vos, to Beijing Sports University to master ping-pong and the Chinese language.

Lindsay cried every day for the first month; speaking no Chinese and very little English and the pressure of playing ping-pong against strong Chinese players were overwhelming. Wang stayed with her for two months on his own dime, introducing her to important contacts in ping-pong circles, and helping her with logistics like apartment hunting and training schedules.

Wang says that the learning process, for ping-pong and culture, always is mutual. Through his coaching experiences in Belgium, he has learned about the Belgian players' honesty, self-confidence and spirit of fair play. His future goal is to push for more internationalization of table tennis. After all, sports have become intertwined: Belgian table tennis teams hire a Chinese coach, while the Chinese tennis player Li Na has a Belgian coach.

Christophe Devaux, director of the Centre Sportif d'Auderghem, says it is hard to describe how Wang is different from European coaches because he is different from any other coach. "His passion for ping-pong, his experience with ping-pong and he as a person, simply his being there, sets a good example for all the other players and coaches."