Lily Yip in China ... In the Beginning!

By Tim Boggan, USATT Historian

As many readers know, Lily Yip is a two-time Olympian, and twice a Singles Silver Medalist, twice a Doubles Gold Medalist at the Pan-Am Games. She also came first in the 1994 Olympic Festival. From 1993 through 1995 she was our U.S. Closed Women’s runner-up, and for three years was named USOC Female Table Tennis Athlete of the Year. At the just completed 2001 National’s, she won the U.S. Hardbat Championship.

I know, Lily, that Rhoda Samkoff of your Westfield, N.J. Club did a lengthy interview with you for the Jan.-Feb., 1994 issue of the USA Table Tennis magazine in which you reveal some intimacies – that you enjoy drinking gin, for example. My brand’s Bombay Sapphire, and yours is still …Gin Seng Elixer? But, much as I might be interested, it’s not your current 38-year-old adult life I want to ask you about here. Rather, since you were so nice as to resurrect these two photos from your youth for me, let’s talk about how, in China, you came to be a good player. Obviously, even at a young age, you enjoyed posing with a table tennis racket. When and where was this picture of you with the other five girls taken?

Lily: That was 30 years ago, and these girls are my table tennis teammates in an elementary school near my home in Canton in Quangdong Province. I’m the youngest, eight years old, and the two girls on the right are 12 or 13.

Lily in 1971, age 8 (third from left, with big grin!).

I gather you showed extraordinary promise at a young age – but you seem to be holding the racket in this photo as if you might have started as a shakehands player.

Lily: No, I always played penhold. In 1970, when I was seven, I was picked from hundreds of kids to possibly pursue, really pursue, my interest in table tennis.

Just to possibly pursue your interest in table tennis, even when you were so precocious at it?

Lily: Well, I  also liked music and liked particularly to dance. “Choose!” said my table tennis coach when I got to be eight. “Table Tennis or Dance.”

That sounds intimidating – as if you were free to choose only these two options in the long life that awaited you.

Lily: In China, if you wanted to excel, you had to choose early. There was good support from the Government for Table Tennis, and people were in place to help you if you were serious. I also had the opportunity to learn how to play a musical instrument, one similar to a guitar – though now I’ve forgotten how to do it. In fact, right now my son Adam and I are taking piano lessons – Adam’s better, my piano-playing rating’s about a 1000. Of course I was serious about my table tennis. Our grade school had one of the strongest teams in the city, and I became the best player on it.

Then what?

Lily: When I was 12, I was sent to a special table tennis school, where I stayed in a dorm, spent half a day in classes and half a day in training, and could come home over the weekend. After 3 and ½ years representing Canton City, I graduated into being a professional player representing Quangdong Province. I have to say that this advance wasn’t easy, for I turned out to be the first and only one from my elementary school who ever became a professional.

And being a professional brought about what changes?

Lily: To begin with, my coach let me choose a special racket. I picked an 8-ply one – and in my eight years as a professional player I always played with it and it never broke. I don’t use it now, but I still have it, even with me here in Vegas. Also, though I liked my hair long, it was as if I were in the military – short hair was mandatory. I was paid to play by the Government, and if my Quangdong team finished among the Top 4 Provinces, our Janlibo sponsor – they make a high energy sport drink – gave us a bonus.

Lily (second from left), at about 17, in 1980 at the Great Wall of China. Third from right is Johnny Huang.

So how’d you do?

Lily: Well, of the 16 girls on our Quangdong team I was originally #15. We played maybe half a dozen regional and elite tournaments a year as well as the National’s where – a little different from this one in Vegas – there were seven events. I improved rapidly and by my second year on the team, in 1980, I’d made a dramatic move up to #2.

With the result that you had, or would begin to have, some good wins?

Lily: In 1980, I beat the 1979 Chinese National Champion, Liu Yang, and came 3rd in Women’s Doubles at the National’s. This picture you see of me at the Great Wall with Wenguang “Johnny” Huang (third from right) was taken after these 1980 National’s. Great haircut, huh? Johnny, on emigrating to Canada, has continued to be a world-class star and just this year was runner-up at our U.S. Open to China’s Liu Guozheng. The other woman in this photo became a table tennis coach in Hong Kong. I also had another very good career win – at the 1982 National’s. I beat Geng Lijuan, who’d go on in the mid-‘80’s to become both the World Women’s and Mixed Doubles Champion and the World Women’s Singles runner-up. In 1989 she’d emigrate to Canada and marry the Canadian international Horatio Pintea.

But, alas, like so many other very fine players, you still weren’t good enough to be on the Chinese World Team, and – live with it – you knew you never would be?

Lily: I was in the Top 16 three times at these Chinese National’s, won a tournament in Hong Kong, and in 1982 was Guangdong Province Champion. But you’re right – I trained for three months in Beijing with future World Champion He Zhili, later playing as Chire Koyama for Japan, and other stars. Of the 12 members of our National Youth Team, the top 10 would be World Champions – I was #11. So by the time I was 20 I thought I’d better find other directions to pursue. Beginning in 1984, though I continued to play table tennis, I started college, which the Government paid for, and three years later, I had a Phys. Ed. Degree. I also had thoughts, after studying English, of coming to the U.S. – or, momentarily, of even going to Singapore, where my father, a victim of the Cultural Revolution, was from.

Which is not, I suppose, what your Quangdong Province Team wanted you to do?

Lily: Of course they wanted me to stay as Women’s Team Coach. I enjoy coaching, and do a lot of it now. But I had dreams of freedom and opportunity. So in 1987 I came to the U.S., retired from table tennis, married a chess player, had two children, and…

…And, readers, end of this story…for, with racket in hand and that same recognizable smile of 30 years ago, Lily, as we know, started a new and very satisfying life with husband Barry, son Adam, and daughter Judy – all of  them U.S. Champions.