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Scott Preiss and Family Visit China! |
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Written by Scott Preiss
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China in the Summer? Preissless
Next week I will leave for Shanghai with my son Austin for six weeks of table tennis training. My older son Adam will be hitting the other little white ball this summer, as Adam is a member of the local Middle School Golf Team, and will compete in eight golf tournaments this summer. Adam also trains in table tennis and is a past Colorado State Champion, but this summer he will concentrate on his golf game.
My wife Hong Yu will stay home with Adam for three weeks and then join me in Shanghai at the end of the month. Then I will come home and Hong Yu will stay with Austin for the remaining of his training.
It has certainly become a challenge to try and assist my son Austin to become a World-Class player. There are no feeder systems in the United States like in other sports such as baseball, soccer, and basketball. There are simply not enough table tennis clubs to hold a large number of players. With a larger number of players the level of play almost always gets better. How nice for China to have more than 100 million players!
Austin’s training regimen will be almost the same as last year. Only this year we have rented an apartment that is walking distance to the training hall. The training hall is actually an elementary school with regular classes. The difference is the children train in table tennis five or six days a week, four hours a day. They begin their technique training for the sport between 5-7 years old.
The elementary school is located downtown near one of the most famous outdoor markets in all of China. I remember last year for entertainment all Austin and I had to do was walk through the market to see a million items, everything from Big Bertha Golf Clubs, to Bears paws, a delicacy in China.
My wife Hong Yu was raised in Shanghai, China and lived there until she was 27 when she came to the United States to study. We met in New York while I was on a table tennis exhibition tour. When I met Hong Yu I had just returned from living in Beijing, China for six months studying table tennis and acupressure. My Chinese was pretty good at that time. I must have faked her out; here we are 15 years later with two boys in Colorado Springs, CO.
Hong Yu was an exceptional student and also a Master in the Chinese slow moving martial art of Tai Chi Chuan. Tai Chi Chuan is a slow moving exercise that has proven to be a miracle cure in China and many other parts of the world. When Hong Yu was young she trained each morning with a Master at 5AM.
When first coming to Colorado Springs, Hong Yu taught Tai Chi Chuan to a group of professionals. These days she spends most of her time tutoring our children, Teaching Chinese at the Chinese Language School, and managing the real estate investments she made. And if this is not enough she also finds time to teach Line Dancing in Colorado Springs.
To let you know how good an athlete Hong Yu is let me bring you back to 1990. Hong Yu and I knew each other for two years and when we had met I was astonished to find out that she had never played ping-pong before. When she did get a paddle in her hand she was natural. Her strokes were beautiful and she already had a great sense of the game. The reason she said was that she always saw table tennis on TV and was able to imitate the movements of the players. To make a long story short, Hong Yu and I won the Arizona State Mixed Doubles Table Tennis Championships less than two years after Hong Yu started playing.
I will get back in touch with you all when I arrive in Shanghai and start table tennis training. Let me ask you all though, have you ever had the famous Chinese dish of live shrimp in soy sauce?
Scott Preiss
US National Coach and Trainer
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Table Tennis Robots
