The city of Jinzhou, Liaoning Province in northern China has produced several famous table tennis players including Wang Nan, Ma Lin Guoliang and Ma Long. This is also the city where Zhang Hong Ming was born in 1990.
Zhang Hong Ming started playing table tennis at school when he was 7 years old. His mother was a coach and gave him a good start. He was the best player at his school and played on the Jinzhou city team and later on the Liaoning province team.
When Zhang Hong Ming moved to Zhejiang province, he attended a table tennis school Monday to Saturday. The training was very intense. Each morning there was singles type play and every evening multi-ball.
In 2006, he trained with the former world champion, Kong Ling Hui every day for 6 weeks. It was very important to his development to be able to learn so much from such a great player.
Zhang Hong Ming has trained with Darius Knight and Paul Drinkall in China. He thought Darius was very fast while Paul was very powerful with a high quality spin.
Zhang Hong Ming now attends Metropolitan University in London, England where he is studying English. He enjoys the language, culture and even the food. Even though, as he says, the Chinese food here is much different from that at home.
He is also enjoying the competition. In the British League he played very well to beat Gareth Herbert 3-0. He lost to Andrew Rushton 1-3. In the deciding 4th game Andrew changed his serve and went cross-court with his attacking strokes instead of down the line.
Mark Kinlocke
