I recently traveled to Hong Kong and got a chance to play table tennis with good players there. You would think that getting to play TT is easy in Hong Kong, but you are wrong. During the pandemic, they removed all outside tables and you only get to play good opponents if you know where you can find them. Luckily locals and friends could help me find a place to play. It was a weekly meetup where the best players from the region play against each other and I could take part at it. If you have seen Adam Bobrow in HK, you know the hall. When I got to this place, everybody wanted to play me - they had never seen an european play table tennis before. People came here to watch me play and filmed me, even though I definitely didn't play the most spectacular matches in the hall. What was interesting is that so many more people are playing pimple rubbers in HK. Most people played penhold. If they didn't play pimples, they played the hurricane rubber with the blue sponge. Most people had a great forehand, not so good backhand. Their footwork had much more system that mine. I was doing much more excess work when I was moving. They were using side spin much more as a technique. When you were too far in the backhand side, they would play a side spin topspin killer into your forehand. When you were too close to the table at the serve receive, they would play a long serve with heavy backspin, exactly on the white line. I also played against ~NR40 from Hong Kong. The match wasn't really spectacular, as he had so much spin in his shots that no long rallies could happen and I also think he didn't play seriously. He told me afterwards that I am playing a totally different technique than everyone he has played before. His trainer is Wong Chun Ting, he also gets his old rubbers. I also played a table tennis trainer from Shenzhen, who could hit crazy shots. (Second match in the video) I played from 11:00 in the morning until 23:00 that day, and was invited to play table tennis again the next day at 8:00.
(I am the Dr. Neubauer shirt guy)
Tell me about your experiences in foreign countries!
Tell me about your experiences in foreign countries!