Hi everyone! For this week’s blog post I wanted to talk about something a little different: tennis.
Before getting to China, one of the things that worried me the most was whether I was going to be able to continue training. Since the age of eight, I’ve been playing tennis competitively, traveling to national tournaments almost every weekend. During the weekdays, I have a strict training regimen, and I was very worried I would have to give that up in China. To be honest, I didn’t think I was going to be able to find anyone to hit with close to Tsinghua. As happy as I was to be going to China, I was scared that I was going to have to let go of tennis. I was luckier than I could ever have predicted.
Only one subway stop away from me was the Beijing Sports University. Unlike American colleges, Beijing Sports University is dedicated entirely to the development of sports and the physical education of its students. That means that students not only practice a certain sport in the morning, or the afternoon, but also learn about it in the other half of the day, right down to the science behind their chosen sport. When students graduate, they have a major of a sport: many of my friends were majoring in tennis! Needless to say, this is very unlike any of the athletic programs I have encountered at home. I was shocked but impressed to learn that Professor Qi Bing, one of the coaches of the tennis team and subsequently a Professor of the University, had written multiple papers about the intricacies of tennis strokes, even about how to optimize wrist pronation on the serve motion! Currently, I’m enjoying training with the team, which has multiple players of a very high caliber.
How have you all been? Message me if you have any questions!
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