Ping pong players tune up for Paris with best

With the Summer Olympics in Paris only 62 days away, a number of university students from China's Taiwan Province had a ping pong competition with their peers in Shanghai and six world champions.

This included popular veteran players Wang Liqin and Xu Xin.

The friendship competition with eight teams from across the Taiwan Strait took place on Saturday in Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Fok Ying Tung Sports Center in Minhang District.

Students cheered loudly when the six Chinese table tennis legends appeared. The other four are Xu Yinsheng, honorary president of the International Table Tennis Federation, Shi Zhihao, curator of the International Table Tennis Federation Museum and head of the Chinese Table Tennis College, Cao Yanhua, vice president of the Shanghai Table Tennis Association, and Ding Song, an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

All of the six former athletes are alumni of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Before the competition, they practiced with some of the competitors and presented each of the participating teams with a racket bearing all their signatures.

Shi and Xu opened the competition at a table similar to ones which will be used in the Olympic Games in Paris.

Hsu Po-hsiang, a master student from Tamkang University, said he had been playing ping pong for more than 10 years since his childhood and added the champions, especially Wang Liqin and Xu Xin, are his idols.

"The mainland is a holy land for table tennis for us," he said. "So when we got to know there is an opportunity to come, we all applied.

"I'm so excited and happy to see the world champions. I like them all," he said. "It will be my valuable memories."

Chen Ching-yuan, from Tsing Hua University, said this trip was very worthwhile as he played ping pong with his idol Xu Xin.

"He is known as cloudwalker and a ping pong artist for his outstanding skills," he said. "I was so nervous to play with him that I failed to use my full force. But the experience is worthwhile already, which I could show off to my friends."

The two teams from Shanghai Jiao Tong university took the first and third places, and East China University of Science and Technology the second.

The event attracted a crowd of more than 2,000.