When David Zhuang came to the United States with his family from China in 1990 in pursuit of the American Dream, carrying over his talent in table tennis not only brought him to the Olympics, it also led him to his future wife.
Soon after arriving and moving to North Brunswick, he joined the New Jersey Tennis Table Club in Westfield, one of the most recognized clubs for the sport in the country, where his wife, Joannie Fu, also spent her free time, playing as a hobby.##M:[more]##
“We got along and we started from there,” Zhuang says. “She started taking lessons from me, and she helped me because I just moved to this country.” Four years later, the couple was married. “We’ve been helping each other for the rest of our lives,” he says.
For Zhuang, table tennis is life. In a couple of months, he will be heading to the Olympics for the third time. He first picked up a paddle at the age of eight in China, where table tennis is the number one national sport. Zhuang says every child can be seen carrying a paddle, and the competition is intense. He trained really hard there, eventually working his way up to the professional level. One of his previous teammates there was even a two-time world champion.
When he moved to America with his whole family, including his parents, there wasn’t a doubt that he wanted to continue playing. Zhuang worked for Itox, a computer company out of East Brunswick, for 10 years while pursuing his dreams. His father worked in the cafeteria at JFK hospital in Edison, and his mother was a housewife.
During his time with Itox, Zhuang says, his boss was very supportive as Zhuang went on to win four national titles — he eventually won five — and compete in the Olympics twice. Zhuang has made it into the top 32 players, out of the 64 male Olympic table tennis players around the world
He recently arrived back from Vancouver, where he was the only male from the United States to qualify for the international competition. To qualify, Zhuang had to face other competitors in the USA Table Tennis (USATT) organization to make it as one of the top twelve players in the United States. From there, the list is narrowed down to four players, who then head to Vancouver, where they compete against the top four players from the rest of the continent for the top three spots in North America. Only three men and three women from the entire continent get to make an appearance in the Olympics, but once there, each represents his or her own home country.
In order to represent the country (in any sport) with the United States Olympic Committee, Zhuang says there are no age limits (he is 44), but one must be a citizen, as Zhuang became in 1995, and for the Americans, you have to be in the top 12 to even be invited to the qualifying round.
Zhuang’s first appearance in the Olympics came in 1996 in Atlanta, and he also appeared in the Olympics in Sydney in 2000. “You cannot believe how hard the people were cheering for you,” Zhuang recalls from his experience marching into the stadium in Atlanta. “You feel strong and proud.”
“I was one of the lucky ones,” he said. “Especially in the table tennis field, a lot of people try so hard, train so hard to try to get into the Olympics. A lot of people cannot have that dream come true.”
While he may be lucky, Zhuang has a slew of national and international championships to prove otherwise — he is a five-time U.S. national men’s single champion, an eight-time national men’s double champion, and he won a gold medal in the 1999 Pan American Games, where he lead the U.S. men’s singles team, to name a few. He has to stay on top of his game, and is always practicing. “It’s an individual sport. It’s not like a team sport, where you can pass and have defense. In table tennis, you have to do everything by yourself. It’s a lot of mental game, too. Of course you have to practice your own skills, but that’s not enough. In a real tournament, you have to deal with your opponent. The ball is very fast.”
This requires a lot of practice because players don’t have much time to react and think, and practicing skills is a lot like mathematics, Zhuang says. Zhuang also goes to the gym two or three times a week for weightlifting and to keep his body in good shape.
Zhuang says he couldn’t have made it without the support of his wife, who works for SES Satellite as a satellite engineer and who he says is his coach and completes part of their team, his two daughters — Zoe, 10, a student at Millstone River School, and Cassidy, 4, a preschooler at Knowledge Beginnings on College Road — and his friends. The Perrine Path residents moved to West Windsor in 2001. Zhuang also has support from his two major sponsors — Butterfly, a major tennis table equipment and supply company, and NYAC, or New York Athletic Club, one of the most prestigious athletic clubs in the country.
He is excited to be competing in the Olympics again. This time is particularly special for Zhuang, who will be leaving in August for Beijing, in the country where he grew up.
“Of course, China raised me up to 27 years old. I’m used to their culture,” he says. But he also looks at competing in China, representing the United States in another way. The sport is not different, regardless of what country one represents, he says. “It’s like the NBA players, like Vince Carter,” Zhuang says. “He used to play in Toronto. Now he represents the Nets. Who knows tomorrow what team he will be representing.” Still, people will be cheering for him.
And he’s hoping that competing in China will be similar. “I think it’s an advantage because Americans will cheer for me, and the Chinese will cheer for me.” He says that was also one of his motivations in pushing himself to qualify for the Olympics this year.
Although there have been protests recently around the world against Beijing’s hosting of the Olympics during the passing of the torch, Zhuang steers clear of the politics, saying he is focusing on having fun because it’s a once in a lifetime experience.
While Fu enjoys playing as a hobby, the couple doesn’t really talk much about the sport with each other because having a professional career in the sport is not always fun, Zhuang acknowledges, because there always has to be a winner and a loser, and there are tough losses. But Zhuang says table tennis is a great sport for people of all ages.
In fact, Zhuang now spends about 80 percent of his time coaching his own students, which he has been doing for the past three years. And he’s very proud of his students’ accomplishments.
Table tennis teaches a high level of discipline, and Zhuang boasts that five of his six students — who come from New Jersey and Pennsylvania — have been accepted into Princeton, Harvard, and Cornell universities. “If they train well, they study better,” Zhuang says. “Their concentration improves, and they get a lot of discipline, too.” Every year he takes his students to the AAU Junior Olympic games. Three years in a row, his students have won six gold medals.
Now as Zhuang prepares to leave this summer for Beijing, his wife and two girls will head across seas with him to watch as he competes. Although his daughters aren’t likely to express the same level of interest in table tennis as he does, Zhuang says Zoe is actually into ice skating, and he says she’s pretty good at it. Perhaps one day she can make it to the Olympics, like her father, but for ice skating. “That would be nice,” he laughs.
