In a sentence

As a player he was nicknamed the “trick-shot artist”; as a coach he pushed a team stuck in a trough back to the top of the world.

Playing style

  • Left-handed shakehand with inverted rubber on both sides, with huge variation in serve spin
  • Strong at reading and generating spin, hence the nickname “trick-shot artist”
  • Meticulous in the first three balls, using his serve to open up the point

Career and key moments

He was a mainstay of the Chinese men’s team in the 1980s — left-handed shakehand, inverted rubber on both sides, with serve and spin as his signature. His real weight came after retirement. He returned to coach in the early 1990s and moved from head coach of the men’s team to head coach of the Chinese national table tennis team, leading the men through the whole process of climbing back to the top while surrounded by the European powers. He later moved on to broader roles, serving as a deputy director of the General Administration of Sport and, for a time, concurrently as president of the Chinese Football Association.

What he left the game

He built the training and management system that would be studied again and again: technical details can be taught, but willpower and standards can only be led. The stability of Chinese table tennis over the following two decades rests on those ten years of coaching.

In a sentence: A player’s talent sets a team’s height; a coach’s system sets a team’s length.