The Bad Boy of Badminton

I had come to see the Bad Boy of Badminton, the shuttlecock king of Asia who had captured a pair of world titles along with the hearts of young women across his land. You’ve probably never heard of Lin Dan, but in China, which treats badminton and table tennis with the same fervor with which Americans treat the National Football League, Lin is a fullfledged sporting idol, a handsome and charismatic 24 year old and the best badminton player in the world.

Watching him in person, it was easy to see why the man called “Super Dan” is The Man in his sport. He was deft, athletic, and brimming with charisma. Lin stalked across the court during matches, pumped his fist after points, and offered a back story (including fights with coaches and opponents) that felt more at home in the NFL. For a sport I had previously associated with aristocrats, Lin was a revelation, at least for me.

Badminton is an obsession in China, and the closest I think I came to discovering part of China’s soul was attending the men’s singles gold medal matches for both badminton and table tennis. How popular are those sports in China? The men’s team final in table tennis drew an estimated 478 million viewers on CCTV (China’s staterun television), according to CSM Media Research. The entire population of the United States is a little over 300 million.

For the badminton final between Lin and Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia, I was flanked by a group of young Chinese students, mostly female, working for the Olympic News Service. The women did not hide their affiliation. With every point Lin won, they increased the intensity of their fist shaking, and they were not alone. Throughout the match, the crowd at the Beijing University Institute of Technology roared for nearly everything Lin did, chanting, “Come on, China” in Chinese before every point. For the men’s table tennis final at Peking University's Gymnasium – a match that pitted the flamboyant Wang Hao, the world’s top-ranked player and a young heartthrob like Lin, against the veteran Ma Lin in an all-China final – the crowd unleashed the phrase “Jiayou, Wang Hao” with drumbeat regularity. The chant literally translated to “Add oil, Wang Hao,” though one need not be fluent in Mandarin to understand that they were urging Wang to fight harder. In the end Ma proved to be the steadier player.

Though I witnessed Usain Bolt’s sprint double at the Bird’s Nest as well as some remarkable swims at the Water Cube, my exploration of badminton and table tennis are the most indelible sporting moments of my stay in China. Few in the United States paid attention to the results of either final, but the nationalism exhibited in those halls was mesmerizing and palpable. I’m not sure how much I know about China after a 24-day stay, but I do know it is an interesting place, a global tiger filled with energetic young people primed to take over the world.