With all the layovers, it took us almost thirty hours to get from Los Angeles to Qingdao. In the Tokyo airport, while we were waiting for our next flight, Mother and I got into a fight. It was my fault⁠⁠—I made fun of her for playing too much Candy Crush on her big Samsung phone.

“This is beneath you,” I said. “This is the kind of thing for people with low intelligence.” We were sitting in one of those airport food courts, so there were a lot of people getting up and down and chairs scraping and orders being called out and such.

She didn’t look up.

“You’re polluting your mind,” I continued. “What if we go to the bookstore?” I tugged on her arm. “We can see if they have any books in Chinese.” I was always trying to get her to read.

“This is why you have no friends in school,” she said, looking up finally. “Because you read too many books.”

But this wasn’t true. When I was in elementary school, yes, I had no friends, but that was because one day in third grade, I wore my professional short-shorts to school and they were so tiny that my ass was kind of hanging out and then this tall white girl, Lisa, told everyone on the playground that I was a slut. While I was playing with the wood chips and monkey-barring or whatever, she went around and whispered seriously into people’s ears, “Look at that slut, running around.” None of us knew what that meant, that word. Only that it was not okay. Also I was too big in elementary school, like a foot taller than everyone else. That’s another reason why people didn’t like me, probably.

But now I had just finished sixth grade, and the Percy Jackson series was huge. I told Mother about the time I’d brought a copy of The Mark of Athena to school the day it came out and this one girl who sat next to me in homeroom literally got down on her knees in front of everyone and begged me to let her borrow it for homeroom reading. The teacher had to come over and be like, You can’t get down on your knees in homeroom like this. I told Mother this as if to say, See, books can be cool, can even make people come down to their knees, which for Chinese people is very big news, people coming down to their knees, and she said, “Why would you call me dumb?”

“What?”

“You can’t call your own mother dumb,” she said. “That’s really mean.” 

“Ma, I didn’t call you dumb.”

“Yes, you did!”

“No, what I’m saying is, you’re doing something a dumb person would do. You don’t want to be mistaken for a dumb person, right?”

She went back to playing Candy Crush in a big fuck-you kind of way and continued to play on the plane. “You’re not dumb, okay,” I said, when we got to our seats. “I’m sorry,” I kept saying, but she stayed steadfast in ignoring me. So I did a practice AMC 10, which stands for American Mathematics Competitions, tenth grade, and the rest of the time I slept soundly. Mother, on the other hand, who has not been able to sleep a lick since the year she got pregnant with me, watched Skyfall instead, the one with the Adele song, because it was one of the few movies on the plane that had Chinese dubbing. And also because she liked Adele, which is another thing about Chinese people. All Chinese people love Adele.

When we got to the hotel, it was the afternoon. We fell asleep promptly and when we woke, it was three in the morning. Without turning on the lights, so I could try for some more sleep, Mother got my primary blade out from the luggage and started to reglue the rubbers, so that they would be ready for the big day ahead. Over the years of gluing my blades, she had become a maestro, so much so that grown, sweaty men back home paid her handsomely to glue their rubbers, although I suspected that they used this as an excuse to get closer with Mother, who walked around the club in red stilettos and lipstick, picking up balls from every corner. She did this with various ball-picking-up instruments, a long black tube with rubber bands at the ends, a thin net connected to a pole, and she looked beautiful. She really did. The men paid her fifty bucks for the whole process, which I always felt was an injustice. Mother’s gluing was worth so much more. It took so long and filled the whole room with fumes, and of course the men would imagine her at home, in the privacy of a bedroom, in her soft home clothes, gluing, waiting for the liquid glue to tense up into a clear, stiff substance, and that was worth more than fifty dollars, I think. Mother knew it, of course, but she wanted to be good to everyone⁠⁠—she wanted the men to play with me, to give me more games, more of their sweaty time.

I sat on the bed in my little white underwear, my back against the headboard, and Mother sat at the hotel desk, her back turned to me, peeling the Hurricane 3 from my blade and removing the old, dried glue by rubbing at the rubber and the wood with the pads of her thumbs. She brushed on the Haifu Dolphin speed glue and fanned until it dried. She added her secret ingredient: Johnson’s Shea & Cocoa Butter Baby Oil. Drifting in and out of sleep, I watched her, the sky starting to blue, the birds starting to chirp, the smell of speed glue mixed with cocoa butter becoming ever more nauseating and pleasurable.

In the morning, a green cab took us halfway up a mountain and into a forest, until we reached a huge sliding gate amid some trees. We went up all these horrible dirt roads, but the driver seemed to know exactly where the potholes were and would slow the car nearly to a halt before each one. The car would lurch to one side and Mother would press solidly into me or me into her and we went like this the whole way there, sliding into each other. We went through the gate, past all these unnatural beige buildings jutting out of the nature, until we made it to the Playing Hall, which was an enormous concrete brick of a building. There were stairs, a lot of them, that led up to a small red door. Surrounding the place: sand. A thick moat of sand. It was all so hot and white and bright, my eyes burned from looking. In the distance, forest. Which was a strange combination, I felt. Fine white sand and then forest. 

We went through the door into the biggest room I had ever seen, where about a hundred kids my age were marching in a single-file line that curled around the perimeter. As they marched, they stretched, swinging their torsos left-right-left-right in sync. One lone voice rang out, a boy in the line, chanting a count to which the others moved. As the stretch ended, another began, and the next voice in line picked up the count without breaking the beat. It wasn’t really chanting but singing, the one-two-threes attuned to a melody they all knew. 

High-ceilinged and without supporting beams, the inside of the Playing Hall looked like a nice place to house a few commercial airliners, but instead there were fifty ping-pong tables, arranged five by ten. The place was so large you could hardly see the end of it.

Someone approached us. An adult. “My name is Shao,” she said, offering her hand to Mother. “You must be the little American,” she said, turning toward me. She was smiling wide, with perfect teeth. She had really nice skin. “Oh, he’s pretty,” she said to my mother. Mother laughed. All moisture had left my mouth. “Here, you two stay put,” said the one with the name Shao. “I’ll go upstairs and get Dong Dao.” The kids were still stretching and circling and singing. 

Dong Dao came down some stairs, his hands gripping the handrails firmly during his entire descent. He had a lot of wrinkles on his face, like a French bulldog. He pointed at me and curled one gargantuan gnarly finger in a “come here” motion. I went over to him at a light run. Mother watched us from a distance. All the other kids were still stretching. They seemed to have a never-ending amount of stretches to do. 

“Your coach called me yesterday,” he said. “We talked about you.” 

“Oh.” 

“I raised him like my own,” he said.

I didn’t know what to say, so I bowed. “Dong Dao,” I said.

He seemed put off  by the bow. A stretch ended⁠⁠—it was the final one, unbeknownst to me⁠⁠—and everyone coalesced into three rows, each of descending height from left to right.

“Attention!” yelled the coach named Shao. Everyone shifted into a perfect stance. Chin up. Chest out. “We have a new member.” She grabbed me and put a hand on my back. “He’s from America. California province.” It took a long time for her to say all the syllables in “California”⁠⁠—Jia-li-fu-ni-ya. “Let’s give him a warm welcome.” Everyone clapped. I could see their faces more clearly now. They looked lean, hungry. Everyone was around twelve, my age, give or take a few years, but there was a seriousness about their chins and their mouths that made them look older. Shao Dao said some more words about the beauty of cultural exchange, about the luck of us all to live in an international epoch of table tennis, about the emerging table tennis landscape in America. What landscape?

“How about this,” she continued. “Before we start practice today, let’s play a game. For diplomacy. Or maybe just for fun. An exhibition.”

People chuckled. Shao Dao beamed. “Any volunteers?” she asked. Every single hand shot up.

I looked at Mother in full panic. She nodded brightly. I was not ready for this. I was not warm. I hadn’t practiced in three days. I didn’t know how the ball would feel in this air pressure or humidity. I didn’t know the bounce of my new glue or how much friction this floor would produce against my shoes. Shao Dao chose someone. Everyone else moved to a comfortable position on the sidelines.

My opponent was much smaller than me. He had the fresh skin of a healthy baby and a very nice, very dense buzz cut. I had the sense that if I rubbed the top of his head with the palm of my hand, it would be an incredible sensory experience, like touching Velcro, or even better. We warmed up. Forehand to forehand. Backhand to backhand. He was a little sniffly and kept wiping his nose with the back of his hand, which he stuck out to me for a handshake.

“My name’s Liu Lian. What’s yours?” he asked.

“Liu Lian, like …” I hesitated. “Like durian, the big stinky fruit?”

“No, durian is ‘liú lián,’ second tone,” he said. “My name is Liàn, fourth tone. What’s your name?”

“I’m from America.” I didn’t know how to tell him that my name was in English and I didn’t know if it was appropriate to say my English name, that I did have a name in Chinese but it was one that I said out loud only when someone asked me, “What’s your Chinese name?” and so to say it now would give it too much importance.

“All right. Zero–zero!” yelled Shao Dao. Everyone clapped.

Two serves each. First to eleven. It was instantly clear that he was better than me. I was first to serve and my first serve was a side-underspin to his forehand. He chopped long. I looped it back, spinny, but too high. He stood his ground, waited half a beat for the ball to sink below its peak height, and counterlooped it down the line, finishing with his racket above his head. “CHO!” he yelled.

Thunderous applause.

I was down 0–3 in a blink. I thought about serving side-under again, but no⁠⁠—I had to avoid that backhand Chiquita of his. I served a low half-long pure underspin to his forehand. He tried his backhand Chiquita again and made contact, but the ball went into the net. “CHO!” I yelled. Mother was the only one who clapped.

Over the next few points, he changed his serve to reverse pendulum, and I failed miserably to tell the spin, resulting in these loose high chops that were easily smashed. I tried not to look at Mother, who was in the corner with Dong Dao, biting her lip. I changed my serve to a high-toss knuckleball, completely no spin, and hoped that he would read it as underspin and chop it. I got a few points that way, but I was still losing dramatically. 2–5. 3–8.

I’m not going to win, I thought, but I need the game to at least be close. It was 6–10. I bounced the ball up and down, thinking about the cruelty of the situation, the long days of neglect ahead of me, dismissed as the American, as a nonentity. Durian was crouched low, swinging his hips slightly from side to side. It was so quick that I might have missed it, but when we made eye contact, he smiled. I went to wipe my sweaty hand on the side of the table. Was that smile for me? I served my no-spin and he popped it straight up.

7–10. I served a heavy underspin and he chopped it into the net.

8–10. He served a flat underspin, and I chopped it fast and long into his backhand and he looped it into the net.

9–10. Is he giving me these points? I thought. He’s definitely giving me these points. But for what? He served a side-under and I chopped it back short and he used his forehand flip with such reckless power that it went out by a mile.

10–10. It was deuce now. My serve. I looked at him again and he wasn’t smiling anymore. I served a long reverse pendulum to his backhand. He stepped around, and with his forehand, looped it down the line. I didn’t touch it.

10–11. We matched backhands crosscourt for a while, which he was impossibly good at, adding spin and power to the ball, standing his ground all the while, until I played down the line, more out of impatience than strategy. With his forehand, he looped it back wide, curving it far out of my reach.

It was over. “Thanks,” I muttered as we shook hands. I looked at Mother. She didn’t look happy, of course. But she didn’t look too upset. There had been a comeback and tension and, at a cursory glance, the possibility that I could have won. Durian said nothing, but when I looked at him, he was smiling again.

The coaches had these long wooden sticks carved from branches that were so similar to one another I still wonder if maybe they were mass-produced. But what kind of company mass-produces wooden sticks to whip children with? Well, there are worse things.

These sticks were very effective⁠⁠—coated in resin, supple, and notched with protrusions, for maximum pain. Shao Dao and sometimes Dong Dao would patrol the perimeter of the tables as we trained, ten hours a day, their sticks tapping the metal ball dividers between each row of tables. Clink clink clink. When someone misbehaved, there was the satisfying SWOOSH of a whipping stick cutting through air and the unmistakable THWACK of wood on skin. Mostly, the kids were hit on the calf. Sometimes they would bleed. They kept playing, or else more lashes. I spotted some raised scars.

Mother encouraged the whipping. Dong Dao called her up one day and asked if he could, if he should, and she said yes, please. Please hit him. He called her right in front of us. We were all standing shoulder to shoulder, at attention, waiting for him to finish. He looked right at me. “Okay,” he said into the phone. “Okay, I will.”

On my first Morning Run, I ran the four thousand meters in twenty-one minutes, finishing a full lap behind everyone else. He did hit me then, for being slow, and to me it was blinding, how much it stung, but compared to some of the stuff I had seen, it was akin to a soft tap, barely leaving a mark on my leg. The other kids were in an uproar. Preferential treatment, they thought. America, they called me. That was the name that stuck. That night there were dozens of mosquitoes inside the mosquito net around my bed. How?

Mother left the day we arrived. After the game with Durian, she had sat and watched the entirety of morning practice. I was paired with Durian. We did regular single-ball drills, no different than the ones I did back home with my coach, Jake. Two points. Three points. Three points starting with underspin serve. I felt embarrassed whenever I dropped the ball or whiffed or hit the ball out, because Durian was so consistent, in this unbelievable way where each of his shots came back to the same spot no matter what I did, and so I spent the entire morning apologizing to him.

After practice, while the others were upstairs at lunch, Mother and I stood outside in the brightness, squinting at each other, our shoes burning against the hot white sand.

“All right, now. Listen to the coaches,” she said slowly. “We’ll wipe the smirk off that Maryland kid’s face. And that Indian kid from San Francisco is gonna cry all over again when he sees you. And Jake will be so happy …” She trailed off. There was something going on in her face.

“Mama?”

“Mm?” She could barely look at me.

“I’m sorry about yesterday. In the Tokyo airport, I mean.” 

“Yeah, it really hurt me.”

“I know.”

“You’re very mean to me sometimes.” 

“I know.”

“Well, I’m going now.”

“Mama, look at me,” I said. “I am going to be good. Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” she said. She turned around. She didn’t want me to see but she had started to cry. She got like this when I called her Mama. “It won’t be so long,” she said. 

I watched her go. All the way across the campus. Through all the white sand. Before she turned a corner and disappeared from view, she waved. I waved back. I jumped up and down and waved really hard.

Afterward, I went up to the dorms and sat on my new bed. It creaked under me. There were three more beds in the room, but there was nobody else here. They were all at lunch. I wanted some water, but I realized I didn’t even know how to get any. And I didn’t know if it was okay to drink tap water in China. I felt like I should ask someone about that, so I walked out to the hallway, but there was nobody. A fly buzzed. It smelled bad, like feet. The whole place smelled bad. 

I ran out of the dorms, as fast as I could, down the stairs, past the Playing Hall. Around the corner. Through the trees. I had to say goodbye to my mom one more time. 

“Ma!” I yelled. I ran and ran. I was completely out of breath. “Mama! Don’t go. Mama!” I got to the sliding gate. I looked around wildly, but she was already gone.

Monday–Saturday Training Schedule 

7 A.M. 

4,000-meter/2.5-mile run on the track. Under 20 minutes or no breakfast.

7:20 A.M. 

Breakfast.

8:30 A.M. 

Jog, stretches, Morning Lecture. 

Single Ball

• Forehand topspin, backhand topspin.

• Two points.

• Three points.

• Three points with crossover.

• Backhand, turnaround, crossover.

• Bai Dong (topspin anywhere).

• Short chopping.

• Short chop, turnaround underspin loop, crossover.

• Underspin loop, then anywhere.

• Mock game points.

Noon 

Lunch and required napping.

3 P.M. 

Jog, stretches, Afternoon Lecture. 

Multiball

• Forehand underspin loop.

• Backhand underspin loop.

• Full table underspin loop.

• Backhand, turnaround forehand, crossover.

• Short chop, turnaround underspin loop, crossover.

Full match with morning drill partner.

7 P.M. 

Dinner

9 P.M. 

Physicals

• Reaction ball with partner.

• Ladders.

• Double jump rope, 60 times 3.

Partnered floor stretches.

10 P.M. 

Free time.

Lights out at midnight.

Sunday was our Day of Rest, apparently, which meant that there were only three hours of touch-practice in the morning, for “hand- feeling.” Then, later in the afternoon, some kids disappeared. I asked around, and someone told me that it was the day for expeditions into the city, the day to stock up on cigarettes and beer, but most importantly, porn. Porn was illegal in China, I learned, so we bought it from “old taxi drivers.” This was called “getting a cab.” I didn’t know about the logistics, because I wasn’t allowed to go. If these old taxi drivers found out I was American, I was told, they’d kill me for my organs, and I believed this.

Durian was in the same room as me. We were both top bunk. The boys were on the second floor of the dorms, the girls on the third. Shao Dao slept with us on the second floor. Dong Dao arrived in a black car every day. After morning practice and lunch, we had Nap Time, which lasted for a good two hours, and even though it was “required,” I didn’t partake. Americans don’t take naps, I wanted to tell them. Or, rather, it was that Americans view naps as a little treat. Unlike Chinese people, who view naps as functional. For the next few days, I waited until my roommates had fallen asleep before tiptoeing off the bed and out the door to explore the grounds, which were amazing to me, an alien landscape. The other buildings were empty. Nothing but the sounds of wet heat and wind. And then there was the forest. Endless grass and felled trees. I always got too scared I would lose my way, so I never got the nerve to go too deep. And plus, I needed to be back before anyone could notice I was gone.

One day I was doing just this⁠⁠—leaving the room to go outside during Nap Time⁠⁠—when a voice behind me said, “Hey.”

I turned. It was Durian. “I know I’m not supposed to be out,” I said. “But I can’t sleep.”

“Will you come take a shit with me?” he said. 

It was the first real thing he ever said to me. Maybe it was the first real thing anybody here had said to me so far. The bathroom down the hallway of the dorm was one long communal trough, no stalls, so that when you entered, it was possible, or even probable, that you would happen upon the sight of a piece of shit in the act of coming out of an asshole.

“Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” I asked.

“Please, I get lonely in there,” he said. He was visibly in need of a poo, bouncing around a bit, his whole face scrunched up. Maybe some of the other kids had rejected him. 

“I don’t need to take a shit,” I said. 

“Please.”

“Give me a few pages out of one of your magazines,” I said. It was a sudden moment of bravery. “Then I’ll go with you.” 

“What magazines?” he asked.

“The porn magazines,” I said. “You know, the ones you guys get on Sundays.”

He blinked, then burst out laughing. “Aiya, America. They’re lying to you. You think we’re all criminals? Fuck, you’re stupid. How’s this, you come take a shit with me, and we’ll go out next Sunday, show you what we really do.” I studied him. I did feel bad for him. So, there I was, squatting next to him with my pants around my ankles while he gritted his teeth and clenched his body. When I looked over at him, to examine his progress perhaps, his face was tight, in such a personal mixture of pain and pleasure that I couldn’t quite understand why he wanted me there at all. It was a bad poop for him. And a long one. I mean that it flowed recklessly out of him. He became increasingly lost in his own world and there was not much for me to do. I started to notice how close we were, physically. If either of us wobbled in our squat, our knees might touch.

By the end of the first week, I was still waking up in darkness from the jet lag. Both Mother and I had always spent an embarrassing number of days after plane rides feeling thin and wispy, appetite-less, struggling to stay awake at mealtimes, having slow reaction speeds, so my current failures to sleep through the night came to me as no surprise.

The red numbers on the windowsill alarm clock read four something and the others were sleeping dutifully. I listened to them for a while, the rise and fall of their breath, the creaking of metal beneath their bodies. More sleep was out of the question. I felt crisply awake. I put on my shoes quietly, grabbed my big book from my suitcase, and walked out of the dorm, feeling around for the doorknob in the moonlight.

I walked down the stairs and out of the dorms, unknown bugs humming in the night, and up the stairs that led to the back entrance of the Playing Hall. Concrete stairs with no railing and the little light bulb that was always on. I could just wait here until Morning Run started, I thought. I opened my book, but then a figure came out of the dorms and started walking toward me. There was barely enough light to see, and so for a while Durian and I were both squinting, trying to figure out who the other person was. “Why are you awake?” I asked. “San geng ban ye. In the depth of the night.”

Durian shrugged. “What’s that?” He pointed at my book. 

“It’s an astronomy textbook,” I said, holding up my huge book with a big sun on the cover. “I only had enough room for one book, and I thought I’d bring the densest, most difficult⁠⁠—”

“That’s stupid.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s really boring.” 

“It’s in English!” He had taken the book from me and was flipping through it.

“Well, it’s gotta be. I can’t read Chinese.”

He looked at me. “Ah, so you’re one of these ‘illiterates.’ ”

“Well⁠⁠—”

“I’ve heard about people like you,” he said. “My ma says it’s not their fault, illiterates. Not your fault, sorry. It’s ‘systemic.’ Which means it’s everyone’s fault.”

“That’s true, but I think⁠⁠—”

“Hey,” he said, “will you help me with my English homework?”

“You go to school?” I said. I thought these kids just did ping-pong, that the government pardoned them because they were going to be stars.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“Oh, uh⁠⁠—”

“I’m just kidding. I don’t go to school. But in case ping-pong fails, I need a little backup plan, don’t you think? Not that I’ll need it. As you know, I’m extremely talented.” 

Durian returned to the dorms and brought back an English workbook. It had lots of pictures in it, and for the rest of the time before Morning Run, we sat there and he repeated after me, word for word, slowly. “Martin,” I said. 

“Martin,” he said.

“Luther.”

“Luther.”

“King.”

“King.”

“Junior.”

“Junior.”

“Good!”

“Good! ”

“No, that’s not the next word,” I said. “That’s just me saying ‘good.’ ”

“Oh.”

I had to keep reminding him that English was the language I used the most, that my English was better than he could even comprehend. Funny, because English was actually my worst subject in school. After the school day, Mother drove me straight to the club, where practice lasted until 10 P.M. I would do homework in the car on the way back, and some days, when there was a lot of homework, Mother would do the rest of it for me, into the night, so I could get some sleep.

I woke up most days that week swimming in visceral lack, Mother, Mother, her image sitting with me squarely in the dark, and I went to practice worried that I was going to see Jake back in LA and he was going to be disappointed and turn to Mother and convey his disappointment⁠⁠—and this desire to prove to the both of them that this was working, that it was the right choice to put me here, overcame any morning sleepiness, any ache in the muscles or bones, any mid-drill respiratory failure, and every day I pushed my body as far as it would go and then some, and that is how I made it through the first week, looking at the face of Mother and the face of Jake in my mind and making both their phantom faces do the “Not bad” face, eyebrows raised, upside-down mouth.

One day, at Morning Lecture, Shao Dao read out assignments from her little notebook, and I was assigned to practice with a chopper.

“I have long pips on my backhand,” he said when we got to our table. 

“Okay,” I said, annoyed. We started warming up. Long pips is a rubber with hundreds of nasty bumps, like long, squishy braille. Against normal, smooth rubber, the kind I used, the kind most everyone uses, you loop topspin and the ball comes back topspin. But against long pips, you loop topspin and the ball comes back just as spinny, a hundred rotations per second, but in the opposite direction⁠⁠—or, in a no-spin exchange, in this floaty, erratic pattern. 

Dou Dou, that was his name, the name that he told me. “Dou, like beans?” I said. “Like legumes?”

“That’s what everyone calls me,” he said. “Little Bean.” But he was not bean-like in any way. He was thin and long, everything about him, his arms, his legs, his hands⁠⁠—classic for a chopper to have long everythings⁠⁠—and he had the clean, severe face of a model and a beautiful head shaped like an egg. He had his shirt tucked into his shorts, which were pulled high, firmly outlining his balls.

Soon I was sending the ball screaming at him and he was chopping it back, far away from the table, getting so low that his blade was at times clipping the ground. The ball came high and slow but so dense with spin that it felt like the air itself was being pulled into the ball. I used my arm, yes, but mostly my right leg and waist to hoist the ball over in a wild jolt of all my muscles combined, and that was one stroke, and then there was the next. I was losing a lot of water. There was a puddle forming on the ground. I was choking with exhaustion and there were two more hours to go. What did I do to deserve this? I thought, tearing into each ball with my entire strength.

Jake harbored a particular distaste for the chopper. I remember him telling me that he’d lost to a chopper just one time in tournament play, and he was so heartbroken that he stopped eating and sleeping and only practiced, and ever since then he had never lost to a chopper, not even when he was in the German Bundesliga. Which was untrue, obviously, but he said all this with a sneer and a threat, like, If you lose to a chopper, you’ll have disgraced me and you’ll have disgraced yourself. 

Jake wouldn’t hit me at the club, but he would talk about how much he longed to, how things would be different if we were in China. As punishment instead, he would make me do frog jumps⁠⁠—crouch, touch the floor, and jump straight up, feet off the ground⁠⁠—a hundred at a time, several times a day. It burned and it burned. Over the years my thighs became oh-so-beefy. One time, when Mother and I were fighting, she said to me, “You are nothing without him.” Which was true. The words flashed often in my mind, like a neon sign: YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT HIM.

I’d chosen the name Jake for him. He’d asked for a good American name. We sat down and brainstormed. I asked him what kind of vibe he was going for, and he said something young and sexy. Jake was the youngest, sexiest, and most American name I could think of. We spent a lot of time just hanging out. On my tenth birthday, he asked me where I wanted to go and I said Barnes & Noble, and he frowned and said, “Why are you such a little piece of shit?” So I thought long and hard and said, HomeTown Buffet. I sat there for two hours eating a six-thousand-calorie meal of gray and yellow while he sat across from me, not touching anything, calling me “grotesque” and “indecent” and, at one point, “perverted,” while I gobbled and gobbled.  

“At least give it a try,” I said, pushing toward him a little plate of mashed potatoes with gravy, pot roast, and mac and cheese. 

He pointed to the mac and cheese. “What’s this?” he asked.

I had no idea how to say macaroni or even cheese in Chinese. “It’s like … it’s like noodles, I guess.” He put some in his mouth, made a big display of retching, and spat it out into a napkin.

“All right,” I said, reaching for the plate. “All right.”

Once, he did hit me, though. It was the LA Open, a big-deal tournament. All these famous players came to play. Dimitrij Ovtcharov. Oh Sang-eun. By all measures, I was the favorite to win the Twelve and Under, but in the finals, I lost to this one corny-ass kid from New Jersey, Dan, who was rated lower than me and whom I’d always beaten in tournament play. When it was 1–1 and I was up 7–6, the umpire stopped the point, called fault on my serve, and gave the point directly to Corny Dan. I was caught so off guard, I lost that game 7–11. Five straight points.

“Hey, come with me,” Jake said, after the game. He was steaming, breathing loudly. We walked, not speaking, to the men’s room. I walked in first, he was right behind me, and as soon I turned around, he kicked me in the chest, Ganondorf-style. Before I hit the ground, I let out this high-pitched yelp, not because it really hurt but because I was taken aback that he would use his feet. “You fucking idiot,” he yelled. “What was that about?” He was all red in the face. Even though he was only in his late twenties, he was already balding, and you could see some of the red up in his scalp. He had a really round face, but it wasn’t flabby or loose or anything like that. In fact, it was turgid, like a GMO grape.

He was about to say something else or maybe he was going to hit me again, but at that point someone walked out of a stall and stood there, looking at the two of us, Jake towering over me on the piss-dappled floor. Jake pulled me up by an arm and gave the man a quick nod. When he continued to stand there, Jake pointed to the sink, like, Don’t you know how this works, wash your hands.

The momentum of the beating was all gone. It didn’t make sense to start up again, so we shuffled out awkwardly. Jake and I sat down on a bench outside and he started smoking. The Los Angeles sun was low to the ground. “Can I say something?” I said. “I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll practice harder.” He liked it when I said things like this. Promises. “And this time I really mean it.”

He took a deep puff of his cigarette. And then he started crying. Like, for real. 

“It wasn’t a fault. That umpire … that raised-by-a-cunt … ta ma de blind piece of shit … sha bi …” He had to catch his breath to say the next swear word. “It wasn’t a fault,” he said again. “We worked so hard. We were doing so well. And then … and then …” We sat there for a while. He couldn’t stop sobbing. A ton of people walked by and saw us⁠⁠—Jake bawling, sniveling, and me, patting him on the back. 

At the end of the three hours, at noon, Shao Dao smacked her whipping stick against the fabric of the ball divider. I was about to puke from exertion. My hands felt numb. “Game Time!” she screamed. “Game Time!” 

After practicing with Dou Dou, I decided I liked him, actually. He had all the qualities of a benevolent chopper: patience, reach, persistence, wisdom. But playing a game against Dou Dou was like playing against a mirror. Your own spin came back to you again and again with no end. Rallies were a time portal of repetition⁠⁠—I looped, he chopped, I looped, he chopped. I put my entire weight into the ball, and it nearly tore my hip every time, but somehow he was always there, impassive, perfect. 

Practice had been meditative in the end, healing even. Or at least I had understood it. The match, though, was cruel and completely impenetrable⁠⁠—pointless, like, Which one of these insane loops will do the trick? Not this one. Not this one. And even the points that I won, I couldn’t understand why. It was not a match of wit or skill⁠⁠—it was a game of who would break first. And Dou Dou did not break. After I lost, I sat on the floor and wept. The Playing Hall was empty by then. Everyone else was at lunch. I cried stupidly. I wanted so badly to see Mother. I wanted her to float through that door. Mama, I don’t want to play anymore. I want to lie down. I want you to take me away from here.

Shao Dao came back into the Playing Hall to turn off the lights. She looked at me on the ground. “You lost?”

I nodded, crying harder.

She sighed. “It’s lunchtime,” she said. “Come.”

Durian kept a plastic folder in his pillowcase, and when he slept, I guess in order to not crush the papers inside with the weight of his head, he would take the folder out and sleep with it in his hands. And so every night he slept perfectly still, kind of like a mummy, with his hands crossed over his body, clutching the folder. In the morning he put it back inside the pillowcase.

“What is that?” I asked him one night, before lights-out.

He showed me, opening the folder to reveal a single sheet of paper. It was a pencil drawing of a naked girl on her knees. And a voluptuous cock next to her. But she was looking at me. And that was a turning point for me. A moment of complete immersion. The technique was exquisite, reminiscent of a Rembrandt portrait, the details impossibly fine and dense and dark. What I remember most, however, are the eyes, which, like those of Velázquez’s Meninas or Picasso’s Demoiselles, held your gaze and rendered you inseparable from the art. And in a flash those eyes grounded you, physically, emotionally⁠⁠—knew everything about you, all of you, your secrets, your shame.

This was not the drawing of some middling artist⁠⁠—no, this was a masterwork. I understood at once the mummy sleeping, the pillow protection.

“How?” I asked. 

“Dou Dou,” he said.

“And where did Dou Dou get this?” I asked. 

“He drew it,” said Durian.

“Fuck off.” 

“It’s true.”

“Fuck you,” I said. “And fuck your mother.” 

“America, when have I ever lied to you?” 

“What? All the time.”

“Okay, but Dou Dou drew this. I paid him for it. I watched him do it.” 

I stood there, considering this. I looked at the drawing some more. Something else: there was no element of exaggeration. That was another thing that kept the attention, the honesty of the work. “I’m sure he’s in his room. He’ll tell you,” said Durian. He took my hand and led me out of the room and down the hall and into another room, and sure enough, there Dou Dou was, sitting on his bed, waiting for a kettle to boil. He was about to have some instant ramen. And behind him, in what little space he had, there was a poster of the Korean player Joo Sae-hyuk, the best chopper of all time. Nobody else had decor. I hadn’t even thought of it. How much would a poster cost?

Durian was a little nervous, I could tell. “America here is curious about your business.” He turned to me. “Tell him.”

“You showed him?” Little Bean was visibly displeased.

“Yes, well …” Durian stumbled. “I mean, no. America, he doesn’t know how things work. He grabbed it out of my hands.”

“Is that true?” said Dou Dou. He turned to me. 

“Yes,” I lied. 

 “Next time,” he said, “please know that that is unfair to both the customer and my work. A lot of it is about a customer’s personal connection with the piece.”

“I don’t understand. Where did you learn how to draw like this?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said, but he was certainly proud. “There’s an inherent satisfaction in producing quality that the customers will return for. And the money. Better quality means better money.” He pointed to the kettle, which had achieved a boil. “And after the price of the paper and pencils and whatnot … it’s a wonder I don’t charge more.” He lifted the kettle from its base and poured water into the paper bowl. 

“Dou Dou,” I said. “You know, this is … this is real. You have a real talent.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I mean,” I said, gaining confidence, “it’s a real gift you have. You should go to Beijing, to the Central Academy of Fine Arts.” I had watched a YouTube video about that place. “Or New York. Or Paris. Yeah, Paris. You know, Paris is the center of art.” I was getting a bit heated. I didn’t know if what I was saying was right anymore. 

“And what would I do in Paris?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” I said. “You could be famous!”

“I don’t wanna hear this,” said Dou Dou. Beside me, Durian slid down with his back against the wall and sat on the floor.

“How many kids are there like us? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? C’mon, Durian, back me up.” I looked at him, on the floor. He said nothing.

“Two days ago, I almost beat Li Kai,” said Dou Dou. Li Kai was, some might say, our best player.

He was injured, I wanted to say. And you’re a chopper. A stubborn, brilliant chopper, but still a chopper. Even Joo Sae-hyuk was only ever a bronze medalist at the World Cup. You have something none of us have, I wanted to say. What are you doing in a place like this?

Instead, I said, “Let’s be for real. You’re never gonna beat Li Kai.” 

“America,” said Durian.

Dou Dou considered this for a moment. He smoothed over the papery lid of the ramen. “If you’re not gonna buy, get out of my room,” he said, finally. The ramen was ready. He peeled back the lid and started to eat, slowly.

Later, when we were back in our room, I said to Durian, “I’m sorry I let it out that you showed me.” 

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “Secretly, he wants people to see. It’s good publicity.”

Later, after lights out, I jerked off under the blankets, trying to be as silent as possible, not in a lusty, sexual way, but thinking about Dou Dou’s mastery of his craft, his long chopper hands gripping a pencil, his calm demeanor, his successes on and off the table, his wasted potential.

I had barely drifted off when Durian shook me awake. “Come with me,” he said.

By then, I was sleeping deep. Squinting through my grogginess, I could see that it was dawn-ish. There was enough light that I could make out Durian’s figure, already dressed. The alarm clock read five ten.

Zhang Bo Lun stirred in his bed. He was one of our roommates. He slept beneath Durian. We liked to call him Da Lunzi, or Big Wheel. I tended to stay out of his way⁠⁠—he always smelled a bit like cheese. “Where are you two going?” he murmured.

I didn’t know, so I said, “Go back to sleep.”

Durian and I walked to the Playing Hall, blades underneath our armpits. I wanted to ask him what we were up to, but it was too early and I was too sleepy, and it felt too nice to not say anything. I watched him lace up his shoes, which were the ubiquitous blue ones with the yellow stripe, the ones for little kids. I wore my white Mizuno Wave Drives everywhere, in the dining hall, in the dirt. 

“Do you know Kobe Bryant?” he asked. 

“Do I know Kobe Bryant?”

“Okay, so Kobe Bryant is this really famous basketball player. Everyone in China knows about him. Everyone. That’s how good he is.”

“Durian, I know who⁠⁠—”

Durian held up a finger, as if to say, Not now. “Kobe Bryant once said that talent is a big lie. It’s all about who works the hardest, who practices more. He gets to practice at four in the morning, hours before anyone else.”

“Fuck no. I’m going back to sleep.” I stopped in my tracks. “Goddammit, Durian, I thought we were gonna jump the gate or you were gonna show me some secret thing or … or we were gonna assassinate Dong Dao or something.”

“Assassinate Dong Dao?”

“It’s just an example. I meant I thought we were doing something exciting.” I turned to leave.

“This is exciting,” he said, grabbing me by the arm. “Look at us, we’ve beat everyone. In a way, we win. Right here, right now. Isn’t that exciting?”

“No.”

“Okay, okay, don’t go. We won’t do anything exhausting. We won’t do multiball. But I really think it would be useful to practice serves. Don’t you think it’s stupid that we never actually do that during practice? It might very well be the most important part of the game. Stay for a little? Please?” 

So I stayed, the two of us side by side in the dark, practicing our serves from a big bucket. It was a strange new feeling, this private act, just Durian and me practicing in the empty Playing Hall. In LA, in group classes or with Jake, practice, for me, had always been a performance with an audience of one. Now there was no Mother, and I understood this consciously, but still, during a particularly exceptional serve, when the ball floated just barely above the net and the second bounce landed precisely on the edge of the table, I swiveled around to receive her nod. 

When I’d won the Ten and Under at Nationals in Las Vegas, Mother had been nowhere to be found. Over a period of several days and several tables, of sleeping lockjawed each night and rising hungry and wordless each morning to gnaw on my free tournament-sponsored banana, I’d made it, a miracle, all the way to the final table, where, on all four sides, extending far and up into the aluminum bleachers, were my teammates and my enemies, their moms and coaches, sports journalists and balding white guys, so many random people. 

And where was Mother? Lost in prayer, probably, pacing somewhere for the infinite hour of my game, not able to look, buried deep underneath the mountain of simple want and fear, not that I would have stretched my vision midgame to search for her in the crowd. I was doing well in the game, such that any glimpse of her would have been too disturbing, would have ruined this improbable streak I was on and shattered that precarious balance. Because winning, the act of being up and winning: it’s not a situation, not a thing, but something to follow, a sudden glowing path that, if I looked away from it, would disappear.

And the winning point, the smell of that moment, the sound of it, down 7–9 in the fifth and then four straight points, winning on a counterloop, the feeling of it rising in my chest and up to my throat⁠⁠—Mother’s scream, from somewhere, rising high and strange into the rafters. Mother rounding the corner from the periphery, running over to put her arms around me, and afterward, Mother and I roaming the Las Vegas strip, ducking into Bellagio, prancing around the Christmas-themed botanical gardens, pressing our faces against the glass at the Patisserie chocolate fountain, laughing, hugging each other at random intervals, not knowing what to do with all our joy, looking at each other in moments of silence and breaking out into smiles.

After that, I was the best ten-year-old in the United States, better than anyone in Chicago or Philly or Houston or Miami, better than anyone in New York City, better than anyone in New Jersey, better than anyone in Southern California, think about it, even Alhambra, even Arcadia, Cerritos, Diamond Bar, Monterey Park, Rosemead, Rowland Heights, San Gabriel, Walnut, even, if you can believe it, Irvine. Yes, even better than any and every Asian American child in the goddamn Bay Area⁠⁠—Milpitas, Fremont, Daly City, San Jose⁠⁠—fuck those kids, by the way. It was me, strutting into tournaments, all the parents whispering to their kids, kids whispering to their parents⁠⁠—That’s him, that’s the best kid.

But now that I was twelve, I was not the best twelve-year-old. I wasn’t even second. According to the USATT National Rankings page in USA Table Tennis magazine, I was fifth, clinging onto fifth, afraid every day of sliding further down into irrelevance, as if the inertia of that downward motion had already become so deeply entrenched as to render that first-place spot irrecoverable. The boy who was first in my age group back home, Kanak Jha, stayed in first for the rest of our boyhood, then went on to become the GOAT of American table tennis, winning Nationals six times (the Men’s Singles, not the kids’ events). He was also, at fifteen, the youngest-ever table tennis Olympian, competing in Rio 2016, then Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, where he made it to the top sixteen, the furthest by far that any American has made it in the Men’s Singles, losing that game 0–4 to Fan Zhendong, the eventual gold medalist. And on the northeast corner of Hester and Allen in Manhattan, which many times in my life I’ve passed by, there’s a huge mural of him, twenty feet tall, maybe twenty-five, painted on the side of the wall. And how is that supposed to make me feel?

Still, we had to try, Mother and I, not because we were absolutely convinced it was doable to be back in first, but because this was our lives. 

The reds and blues poured in through the windows of the Playing Hall, coloring in the darkness bit by bit. Just the day before, we had broken out a slate of fresh balls, so there were the exciting marks of newness⁠⁠—chalky white circles⁠⁠—accumulating in the same places on our rubbers and on the table. Durian liked to stomp the ground with his right foot every time he served. He had just shattered a ball underfoot that way, and now we could smell the sick-sweet camphor as we served.

I started to notice that, when I served a no-spin reverse pendulum, there was a slight upward kick at the second bounce. Could I serve, for the whole game, very spinny reverse pendulums, and then, at a crucial moment⁠⁠—say, 9–9 or deuce⁠⁠—serve a no-spin using the same motion? Loosen the grip at the moment of contact, rather than squeeze? It occurred to me, perhaps for the first time, that ping-pong, considered alone, could be pleasurable, that if the ball struck the rubber deep and true, it could feel good in the hand, that if I could make the ball go precisely where I wanted it to, it was like having a power that others didn’t. And maybe that in and of itself could be good.

It was almost time for Morning Run, but I found myself not wanting to go. I was getting used to a certain rhythm: tsk, bounce, bouncebounce, hissssssssss. Tsk, bounce, bouncebounce, hissssssssss into the back of the net. Just one more serve before Morning Run, just one more. I was on the verge of figuring something out. I had almost solved some problem.

Home page image: Erin O’Keefe, Circle Circle, 2020, from New and Recent Photographs in issue no. 235 (Winter 2020).