May 9, 2008
Two big news items dominate today’s newspaper front pages: Hu Jintao in Japan and the Olympic Torch on Mount Everest.
South Metropolis Daily printed a big image today on the front page showing a (unusually) beaming Hu Jintao holding hands with Japanese table tennis star Ai Fukuhara.
Ai Fukuhara is renowned both in China and in Japan. She has visited China several times for training. In 2005, she joined the Liaoning provincial team, and later the Guangdong team, to participate in China’s national table tennis contest. Last year, she began attending classes at Waseda University in Tokyo and is currently enrolled as a student there.
Good-looking and speaking good Chinese with a northeastern accent, Ai Fukuhara has huge fan base both in China and Japan, though she has so far failed to win any medal in world level competitions.
Yesterday Hu Jintao, during his visit to Waseda University, showcased his great table tennis skills by beating Ai Fukuhara, and Chinese Olympic champion Wang Nan, together, with the Japanese PM Fukuda standing aside transfixed. Unbelievable, but this is what the media are reporting. According to Japan Today, an English language website:
Chinese President Hu Jintao entertained Japanese and Chinese youths by playing table tennis on Thursday with Beijing Olympics qualifier Ai Fukuhara and Chinese Olympic gold medalist Wang Nan, impressing Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and other spectators in an event at Tokyo’s Waseda University. It had been speculated that Fukuda, 71, might also grip the racket but Fukuda shied away from doing so, apparently after watching an energetic, serious-faced Hu beat Japanese teen player Fukuhara in five of the eight rounds of rally they had.
Fukuda later in the day told reporters that he “chickened out in the face of good players.” He also called Hu’s way of playing the sport “very strategic,” apparently evoking a phrase Fukuda and Hu repeatedly used in the past few days to describe what they hope bilateral relations should be—”strategic, mutually beneficial.” At the event planned as part of Japan-China youth exchanges, Hu, along with Fukuda and about 100 students from the two countries, was first watching Fukuhara and Wang play. But the 65-year-old Chinese president suddenly took off his jacket and glasses and surprised the audience by joining the play and hitting smashes.
Fukuda also told Fukuhara she seemed to be “overwhelmed” during Hu’s play. Fukuhara smiled and said, “Yes.”