Sports from the West mastered in the East

Many of the sports at which China now excels were unknown in the country until the 19th century when they were introduced by Westerners.

Take table tennis, for example, a game first played by Boy Scouts at the YMCA in Shanghai in 1916.

Two years later, the first club was founded in the city, but it was not until 1927 that China sent a team to the Fast East Games, and it never once won a medal there.