When I walk through the streets of Berlin, I sometimes hear a faint noise from afar: Tik, tok, tik, tok, tik, tok, … now you are probably thinking of the app with people jumping around in videos and watching other people do it. But I am thinking of table tennis. So to people who hop around in front of a record without a video. And sometimes other people are watching too.
Table tennis, and this is the plain truth, is way better than TikTok. There is simply nothing more relaxing than standing at the record and chasing the small ball made of plastic, formerly celluloid, over the net. Just the gentle sound of the impact on the plate (“tik”) and the bat (“tok”) put me in a state somewhere between an inner Zen garden and Lao Tse wisdom. Everyday life evaporates, the head becomes free.
It is particularly nice to play one of the numerous public records in the open air. I mainly travel in Neukölln and Kreuzberg. There is, for example, a plate that is surrounded by flowering lilac bushes in early summer and is therefore also just called the “Lilac Plate”. “6 p.m., Lilac Plate? – Yes!” This is a typical text chat between a friend and me.
It doesn’t need more words. Racket packed, something to drink, let’s go. Forehand, backhand, backspin, topspin: The secret lies in not only giving the ball direction and speed, but also rotation. And to recognize this in the opponent, to adapt one’s own movement, to coordinate the shot. If that works, all the better. Playing table tennis means we play against each other, but also with each other. And everyone plays differently.
One could write a whole book about the encounters at public table tennis tables. The most diverse types from the most diverse social classes gather here. The amazing thing is that because everything revolves around a small ball at this meeting, it is extremely cordial. Philosophy doctoral students meet tough guys from the construction industry, Turkish fathers meet the long-term unemployed, gym-hardened young people meet pensioners. Newcomers are welcome.
There is hardly a sport in which, in addition to social boundaries, age and physical condition are so irrelevant. The technology decides. In the mornings, a gentleman over 70 with a flat cap always resides at a Kreuzberger Platte, one hand always in his suit pocket. And while the juniors, who he has routinely played to the limit, gasp for air with red faces, he only remarks dryly that he is not even warm.
You don’t need expensive equipment to play table tennis. For example, the father of a friend played with a kitchen board as a racket for years. And with it he could do things that many would not be able to do even with a high-tech racket with super foam and carbon core. In the lively rounds at the plates, the talk often turns to the sport itself.
This leads to the philosophical: What is the essence of playing table tennis? It’s like a cross between boxing and chess, one said recently. Absolute concentration and maximum body tension, you need both. In any case a head sport adds another. You are dependent on the other, someone adds, with a better teammate you become better yourself. In fact, a small philosophy of table tennis could be made out of it, the rally as a pure interrelationship with the opponent, which always remains in motion. Like the river of life or something like that… There are now whole books about the metaphysics of table tennis. American author Guido Mina di Sospiro calls it a journey of self-discovery.
Table tennis has an amazing history: invented at the end of the 19th century by the bored tennis-loving British upper class as a pub treat, the sport spread at the beginning of the 20th century – as wiff waff, flim flam or ping pong, until table tennis eventually became the official name. There were many Jews and socialists in the organizations who were excluded from other club life. Fred Perry (yes, the one with the t-shirts) became world table tennis champion in 1929.
When Rong Guotuan became world champion thirty years later and thus the first representative of the People’s Republic of China to win an international title in sports, Mao Zedong spoke of a “spiritual atomic bomb”. Since then, table tennis has been a mass sport in China, and the best players come from China. There is a table tennis museum in Shanghai. Many innovations have their origin in the Far East, the sport is still changing. Invented in the 19th century, spread in the 20th century, the 21st century could be the century of table tennis.
Apart from such historical-philosophical speculations, table tennis has another advantage that should not be concealed here: it simply looks damn good. In terms of elegance, table tennis comes about right after figure skating. At least far ahead of jogging and other big-city sports torments in fashionably questionable functional clothing. Even recreational players without great technical sophistication or sporting demands can be proud of. The movements are flowing and soft on their own. Table tennis relaxes by watching, I’m convinced of that.
But even more so if you play it yourself. Indoors or outdoors, singles or doubles, it doesn’t matter. There is only one thing I won’t negotiate with: Concentricity is out of the question. It’s too much frills and not enough table tennis.
