says
ok, I will go back and make sure you have access.
Be...
Well-Known Member
Yes, because people in the west are bad at individual sports like tennis and golf (etc. etc.) and people in Asia are bad at team sports like volleyball and baseball (and rhythmic gymnastics, etc.).
Seriously, any time you read something about how some deeply ingrained aspect of "Asian culture" explains their supremacy in table tennis (or anything else), just ignore it.
What inevitably follows are old stereotypes that in many cases border on racism, even when the remarks are well intentioned. If you feel the need, just go watch a Kung Fu Panda movie instead, at least you will laugh.
By the way I am married to a Chinese person and travel there and in other places in Asia very often and at the moment every nearly single person I work with directly is from Asia. I have also lived in Europe. I feel like I can comment on this from a fairly informed perspective. The idea that a country like China that for decades had a one-child policy and hence generations of only-children is somehow "non-individualistic" just makes me shake my head.
Except for the fact that Japanese and Chinese people look similar to Europeans, there is surprisingly little cultural overlap given their divergent history for millenia. One thing they share for about 60 years is a love for table tennis, an inexpensive indoor sport that does not require large open spaces, unusual physical stature, or a particular climate, and that is also really fun. It was introduced into those countries just after WWII --prior to which time, the dominant players were from Eastern Europe, especially Hungary, an area that continued to produce substantial numbers of potential world champions until government support for the sport dried up there -- which coincided with those countries also becoming democracies. When I was a kid, the great players included Klampar and Joyner and Surbek, and Stipancic, among others. On any given day, one of those guys could beat anyone in the world, whether their opponent was from Japan or China. Also, we know about Waldner and Persson (and Appelgren and Johannson and Bengtsson and Alser et al.). So, where are all the great Norwegian table tennis players? Must be some huge cultural divide, right? Or Archo, where are the Finnish superstars? Lots of ethnic Swedes in Finland.
Every country in Europe and South America loves soccer but in the US, which shares a host of "cultural values" with Europe soccer is only recently emerging, and progress here in that sport is relatively slow. Is it because Americans are bad at team sports because of our culture? Well, no. The most popular sport here is almost the ultimate team sport (American football, which is incredibly choreographed). Through some accident of history, that is the form of football that took root here in the 1890s, instead of the form of football that emerged at about the same time everywhere else. And basketball. And baseball. And ice hockey. All team sports. All things North Americans are good at. One could ask, why is Canada with a population about the same as California just a little better than the US in ice hockey? Some deep cultural divide? Yeah right. People from Minnesota and people from Alberta are somehow completely distinct?
I hate to rant (and don't mean to jump on Arch in particular), but this kind of thing really bothers me.
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