Wang Dayong (right), the first Chinese coach to train a European table tennis player, currently works in Brussels to train young ping-pong hopefuls. [Photo by Fu Jing/China Daily]

A master of ping-pong remains an ambassador of China and a mentor to young Belgian players.

Wang Dayong, 69, a Chinese retiree, arrives early wearing his red and blue sporting outfit and sneakers at a ping-pong club at the Brussels-Centre Sportif d'Auderghem on Wednesday and Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.

These are the time slots when the youngest ping-pong enthusiasts train. Wang walks around with his old-fashioned coach's clipboard, basically some printed sheets attached to a worn wooden board on which he notes all kinds of data on the young players, aged 6-8. From time to time, he stops in front of a few kids and instructs them on the basics of serving and receiving the ball.

Since his retirement from the Belgian national table tennis team, Wang's self-assigned mission has been to recruit talent for the Belgian table tennis player pool. All the children's parents in the club sooner or later come to understand that if their kids have been spotted by Wang, they might have a chance for glory like Wang's best-known Belgian "disciple", former champion Jean-Michel Saive.

Twenty-five years ago when Wang, on a two-year contract, arrived in Belgium, a country with no ping-pong history, he did not feel completely welcome. No Chinese coach had trained a European player while European players doubted whether such a coach, equipped with what they called "Chinese tricks", would fit in.

Invented in England, ping-pong became China's national sport in the 1950s when China won the first ping-pong championships, helping change Western ideas of China as the "sick man of Asia".

Ever since, in China, ping-pong players and coaches have been treated as celebrities. Primary and secondary schools that have discovered and trained table tennis talent from a very young age have benefited from funding and favorable policies from the central government.

The secrets of China's long domination of the sport have become legendary around the globe. In fact, it relied in part on simple, solid training in the basics, as in the Chinese martial arts or any other kind of sports.