Sunday, April 05, 2020

The surprising history of ping pong

Apropos of absolutely nothing, and nothing at all to do with COVID-19 or any of that nonsense, I was idly looking out at people playing table tennis in the park across from us, and idly wondering whether there was a difference between ping pong and table tennis.
I was always under the impression that ping pong was the original Chinese version of the game that involved making the ball bounce on both sides of the net, while table tennis was the more westernized (and easier) version where the ball only has to bounce once on the other side of the net, like tennis. And this is clearly the impression that many other people are under too.
But not so, apparently. Table tennis is in fact exactly the same as ping pong, although some people claim that table tennis is the designation for the more serious, competitive game, while the more onomatopoeic and fun-sounding ping pong name is reserved for the informal version played in people's garages (or, like I used to as a kid, on an old door supported by two saw-horses). The use of ping ping pong as opposed to table tennis is not, however, offensive or pejorative in any way, as some people seem to think. And, whichever name is used, the ball can only bounce on both sides of the net when serving or any other time, otherwise it would result in a lost point.
Even more surprising to me, table tennis/ping pong originated in Victorian England, where it was played as an after-dinner parlour game for the upper classes (although it is possible that it was brought back to England from India by British military officers in the 1870s).
Either way, despite the Chinese-sounding name, ping pong is not Chinese in origin (the name, incidentally, was designed by the British originators of the game to be onomatopoeic, and the Chinese word ping-pang was derived from it, not the other way around). It only began to be played there in the 1920s, when it was already in the process of becoming something of a worldwide phenomenon. Subsequent changes to the rules and equipment were also mainly British in origin. Chinese/Asian dominance in the sport has only occurred since the 1960s.
So, there you go. Ping pong. Not Chinese. And where did that urban myth about double bounces come from?

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