In a sentence

She holds a record no one can take away: the first women’s singles champion in Olympic table tennis history — and she collected gold, silver and bronze.

Playing style

  • Left-handed shakehand; forehand loop with fast attack, quick to open and wide in angles
  • A short-pips backhand that punches small, fast and awkward — her signature weapon
  • Strong in rallies and balanced across attack and defense, willing to change tactics on big points

Career and key moments

At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, aged 22, she beat teammate Li Huifen in the final to become the first women’s singles champion since table tennis joined the Games. In 1991 she left the national team for Taiwan; at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, playing for Chinese Taipei, she eliminated Qiao Hong in the semifinals and pushed Deng Yaping to a deciding game in the final after trailing 0–2, taking silver. At Sydney 2000 she added bronze, becoming the only table tennis player to stand on Olympic podiums for both China and Chinese Taipei. After retiring she earned a doctorate in sport psychology and taught at South China Normal University.

Legacy

Her arrival wrote the first line into Olympic women’s singles history; a career spanning two delegations is itself a footnote on how this sport crosses borders.

Remember in one line: Some records matter not because they can be broken, but because they mark where an era began.