More than Balls of Fury

I recently watched "Balls of Fury," a cinematic masterpiece about a ping pong champion brought out of retirement for a sudden-death tournament hosted by a notorious criminal named Feng, played by Christopher Walken, which was my sole reason for watching.

With ping pong on my mind, I noticed a story on the New York Times Web site about table tennis, the more formal name for the sport, caught my eye.

The story is about Wang Chen, a Chinese-born American citizen who has been a table tennis pro since the age of 11. After being ranked fourth in China and missing out on the Olympic spots that go to the top three players, Chen decided to move to America.

In New Jersey, Chen met Jerry Wartski, a 77-year-old Holocaust survivor who gave her a job managing his New York City table tennis club, now called Wang Chen's Table Tennis Club, and supports her training for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

In China, Chen says, table tennis is like baseball in America. This year she will try for a third time to qualify for the Olympics Games that she was never able to reach at home. This time, however, she'll be representing the United States.



As compelling and interesting as the story was, I found the video that is posted with it to be even more so. The video includes, photos and interviews with Chen, but is mostly her playing table tennis as the narrator, Brent McDonald, tells her story.

In particular I liked the part where she and Wartski play table tennis, because it really brings to light how different the two are, but also how alike.

As are important with a good article, the piece has a memorable opening and closing. To begin the noise of the ball being played back and forth runs in the background as the title of the piece appears and then at the end there is video of Chen serving in slow motion and then striking a winning shot. I thought the slow motion added more drama to the end, especially when paired with the audio of Chen expressing her uncertainty about the Olympics.

I think this is a good example of how an average story can benefit so much from the multimedia aspect available on the Internet.

Walken picture from LA Times
Wang picture © 2007 NBC Universal