Table tennis is regarded as China's "national ball game." From the 1950s, when Rong Guotuan won China's first table tennis world championship (and also the first sports world championship of the People’s Republic of China), to the diplomacy of 'the small ball turning into a big ball' in the 1970s, to the unshakable dominance in the new century, table tennis (Chinese Ping-pong) has carried significant meaning beyond sports in the history of the New China. In addition to its proud achievements, it has become an important calling card for the international community to learn about China.

In France, on the other side of the Eurasian continent, table tennis serves as a window for people to learn about China. Aurelien Boucher, a young sinologist and die-hard table tennis fan from France, has formed an unbreakable bond with China through his love for the sport, leading him to begin researching China's sports culture.

Aurelien BOUCHER

Photographer: Zhang Jing

At Fuguang Bookstore in Guangzhou, we met Aurelien Boucher, a tall, slim young man with an athletic build. When talking about sociology, he speaks gently, showcasing the distinctive style of French intellectuals. In addition to holding a doctoral degree in sociology, Boucher is also a trained table tennis player.

Generally speaking, people have an intuition that seems to suggest "athletes are not interested in sociology, and intellectuals are not very fond of sports." Yet, Boucher perfectly combines a passion for sports with academic studies, turning his love into a career he deeply enjoys.

Boucher started playing table tennis at the age of 14 with a retired table tennis player from the Beijing team. This coach was like a "father" to him, sharing stories about China and stories related to table tennis with him, and telling him how Chinese people play table tennis. As a teenager, Boucher was curious about China.

"Since then, I had a dream to play table tennis in China. Many French table tennis fans have such dream." At age 19, during his first year in college in 2004, Boucher　came to China and had an internship at the Chinese Table Tennis Center in Changping, Beijing.

During that period, he made a lot of Chinese friends and explored table tennis and Chinese sports culture from a sociological and historical perspective. He discovered "Chinese sports," a broader and more fascinating world, as a research interest, and began his academic research theme.

"I want to understand the changes in Chinese society through the history of table tennis," said Boucher. He grew up as a curious child, and table tennis seemed to open a window for him to explore China, a faraway country he was unfamiliar with.  

"Apart from table tennis, I also want to experience this fast-developing society in depth, which is attractive and important for a young person. I think it takes a lot of traveling to learn about yourself and the world."

Aurelien Boucher with Chinese Ping Pong Player Yu Ziyang

Academic dream is to “integrate the East and West”

Boucher studied sociology at Nantes University in France and worked at the Nantes Sociology Research Center during his PhD from 2008 to 2011. The Nantes Sociology Research Center was founded in 1998 by Jean-Claude Passeron, a close collaborator of Pierre Bourdieu, one of the most well-known sociologists of the 20th Century.

Boucher's research was greatly affected by French sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu. 

He devoted himself to the sociological study of Chinese community through a combination of ethnographic observation, interviews, and quantitative survey analysis. In 2008, he completed his doctoral dissertation, La Naissance du Sport en Chine (The Birth of Sport in China), and published a monograph the same year.

In his book, Boucher reinterpreted how Chinese sports culture and health practices influenced contemporary society from a brand new cultural perspective.

La Naissance du Sport en Chine by Aurelien Boucher

Afterwards, in China, Boucher worked as director assistant at the Sino-French Research Center, Tsinghua University, and was responsible for organizing conferences on the “History and Memory” and “Enlightenment Philosophy.”

Boucher has been working at The Chinese University of Hong-Kong, Shenzhen since 2016.

In recent five years, he served as an expert for academic journals such as the “Canadian Review of Sociology,” “Ageing and Society,” “Asian Journal of Sport History & Culture,” "American Journal of Sociology," "The China Quarterly," and "International Review of the Sociology of Sport." In addition, he was a member of the editorial board of the "Journal of Asian Sports History and Culture." In parallel, he continued publishing articles in the field of social sciences epistemology, social stratification, and sport studies.

The motto of CHUK-Shenzhen, "combining tradition and modernity, integrating China and the West," perfectly fits Boucher’s academic interests and outlook. At present, Boucher works as an assistant professor at CUHK-Shenzhen in the fields of philosophy and sociology, offering courses concerning sports, education strategy, and modernization processes.

"The general education program opens up a wide range of ways of thinking from different disciplines so that students can experience research ideas from different majors," said Boucher. His courses include "Chinese Sports History," "Introduction to Data Science," "Dialogue with the Humanities," “Societies, Development, and Inequalities.” These courses are popular among students.

At present, he has settled in the Greater Bay Area with his family. He likes the climate, enjoys morning tea, and occasionally takes his son surfing in Xichong, Shenzhen is very close to Hong Kong and Macao, and it is an international and tolerant city.

Boucher favors the saying "You are a Shenzhener when you are here," which is known to households throughout the city.

"Here, you are a foreigner, a local, and also a Shenzhener, and everyone has different identities, this is the part I like about Shenzhen,” said Boucher.

Aurelien Boucher with his son

Interviews

Southern Metropolis Daily: You came to China twice specifically for table tennis, in 2004 and 2008. Can you tell us about these two experiences and what you gained from them？

Boucher: I often talk about my first experience in China with my students. It was 2004. It's funny when I ask them how old they were and some of them weren't even born yet. I stayed at the ZhuoLong Table Tennis Training Base in Changping, Beijing for more than two weeks, playing table tennis every day. I was so tired that I lost 4 kilograms. You can see that I am very thin now, but I was even thinner at that time. I felt I had to take a break, and then I spent a month in Beijing to learn more about Chinese history and society by visiting many historical buildings.

Upon my return to France, I shared my experiences in China with professors, discussing table tennis and the development of sports in China, which aroused great interest among them. At the University of Nantes, where I studied, there was a group of experts in the sociology of sports who were not only the most influential and well-known sociologists of the 21st century, but also former Bourdieu associates. They told me that “there are not many talented people who understand Chinese sports, and it's rare to have this resource, plus you can speak Mandarin and are a 'scholar,' so you should research Chinese sports history.” Encouraged by them, Boucher seized the opportunity and came to China.

“I came to China for the second time in 2008 and did field research in Qingdao to learn about children in the table tennis schools -- their family backgrounds and learning situations. In fact, it was to understand the reforms and changes in the training mechanism of Chinese sports talent reserves in the 21st century. Basically, my doctoral research is about these issues.”

Southern Metropolis Daily: What are the discoveries in your field research in Qingdao?

Boucher: My coach joined the Beijing team in 1970. He was selected from a school. Coaches would select gifted players and provide them with specialized training for a few hours a day, guiding them to a professional career. At that time, my coach told me: "You can't imagine the meaning of being selected for the Beijing team. I got eggs, meat and milk, whereas my family only used to get cabbage every day in the winter, without meat at all. When I joined the team at age 10, I was able to earn money for the family."

My coach made me realize why athletes of that era thanked the country and the Party so deeply, because that changed everything in their lives. After the reform and opening up, especially after the 1990s, the training and selection mechanism for sports talent was a little bit different, and the table tennis schools started charging fees, and participants had to pay to play table tennis. I surveyed more than 400 students using a questionnaire in Shandong, investigating their family background, the reasons, and so on. Among them, there were only two children of farmers, not many of workers, and most of them were children of self-employed people, because they were migrants in the city. It was 2008, and in many cities in China, if you were a migrant, you couldn't go to the local public schools, the private schools weren't particularly good. It was more troublesome to go back to your hometown to study, so going to a table tennis school would be a better solution for your child's schooling and future. Many parents want their children to have a try, and if they succeed, they can become athletes, or, if they fail, they can become physical education teachers, and it's not a bad idea to become a table tennis coach. That's a big reason why those people started playing table tennis.

Their views towards themselves, their families, and their country is a bit different from before. Financially and psychologically, the parents have to support the players for the rest of their lives. The parents and the coaches have to help them find professional teams for further development. In the end, the athletes will still feel the honor of representing the country, but first of all, they will think about their own, their parents', and their coaches' contributions.

Southern Metropolis Daily: What methods were used in completing your doctoral thesis?

Boucher: I visited seven or eight different table tennis schools, observing their daily life, getting directly involved by playing with them, or acting as an assistant coach to train them. But in general, I spent more than two years doing fieldwork and daily observation among different schools.

I also went to some archives and checked the public information of the State General Administration of Sport to understand the background of the national reform of the sports training mechanism. In particular, there is a "contracting system" in sports, which is a gold-medal task, in which coaches have to accomplish some gold-medal goals every four years. It is a new thing not seen back in the years of my coach and the rules had changed a lot of things. But when there is a policy from the top, there is a counter measure at the bottom. Many people will also consider how to face the pressure of wining gold medals.

Southern Metropolis Daily: Your research covers a wider range of topics besides table tennis, such as urban lifestyles, social differentiation, and modernization processes. How did the other studies develop out of this?

Boucher: In fact, my interests are diversified. I started with research on sports because I had resources and was familiar with the field. Later my research had expanded. Regarding lifestyle, there are not many people doing similar research in China. To be honest, social research in China is done to assist the reform of the country, and there is not much research on lifestyle. Lifestyle includes sports, going to the library, movie theaters, and many other things. My academic training followed the path of the Bourdieu school of scholars, so my research in this field is more traditional. I think my research in this area can also contribute to the academic field.

Meanwhile, I continued to study sports and became a member of the editorial board of the Asian Journal of Sport History & Culture. From 2018 to 2021, I studied the labor market for golf coaches. I planned to compare labor divisions of employees in different sports events because the development of golf is more distinctive in China. I like the sport myself, so this study was interesting. To be specific, I learned about the openness and instability of the labor market for golf coaches through my study, and I also compared the working conditions and incomes between physical trainers and artists.

Southern Metropolis Daily: How do you understand the role of sports culture in contemporary Chinese society?

Boucher: The ways that sports affect our lives vary from person to person. For athletes, it's life and living, and a career. For ordinary people, it plays an important role for people in urban life in finding balance in their lives and as a way to relax from stress.

In recent years, with the implementation of the "Double Reduction" policy, more attention has been paid to the physical fitness of minors and children. The State also hopes that children will exercise more. However, we can also see that this is still a challenge, and the physical fitness of many students is not satisfactory.

In fact, China has a rich sports culture and values the Olympics the most, regarding it as an important way of shaping national identity and recognition. The movie, My People, My Country, released in 2019, expressed patriotism in several different stories, two of which were sports-themed. One tells the story of a Beijing cab driver who was given a ticket to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. The other is about the Chinese women's volleyball team that won the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Sports are part of the culture of collectivism, and in the history of Chinese culture, sports are more than that. Sports are also part of the road to rejuvenation, part of the country's history.

Questions to Sinologist

(Questions solicited from readers of Southern Metropolis Daily)

1.Why are humans passionate about sports?

Boucher: Philosophically, Marx actually discussed this. We don't just live to work, we live to exert ourselves and create the world around us. We transform the material world in the way we think for ourselves and others, which means, human beings are primarily characterized by having the ability of creation, reasoning, ideals, and imagination. From this point of view, sports provide a space for the expression of human potential.

In fact, sports are also a way to challenge, to stir up our emotions. For example, sociologist Norbert Elias argues that sport fulfills the human need for emotional release. In modern society, everyone expects you to have an exemplary attitude, either in school or at work. You have to obey the rules and control your emotions and feelings. Society, organizations, and schools all have requirements for "attitudes," and some of the real-life battles people have with each other, and the various emotions associated with them are carried over to the sports arena. It doesn't matter what country you're from, it's all the same.

Therefore, one important function of sports is the venting of emotions. Competitive sports are able to produce the mimetic function of emotional arousal in which people can experience many emotions such as laughter, anxiety, exuberance, sympathy, and antipathy at a higher level than in regular daily activities. Modern competitive sports also incorporate national and state ideologies, mimicking the effects of the battlefield, mapping individual and societal emotional expressions onto the field. This is one of the conclusions of Elias' study.　

2.Should I choose sociology? How can I tell if I am a good candidate for studying sociology?

Boucher: I think, most importantly, choose a major according to your interests. If you are interested in it, you will learn from whatever you study. Secondly, you may worry about not being able to find a job after graduation from sociology studies.   

As long as you are open-minded, cheerful, and curious, if you can understand other people instead of judging them, and if you work hard with reflective capabilities, you can learn other subjects like mathematical models, methodology, epistemology, and cultural and historical backgrounds afterwards.

3.How did you learn Chinese?

Boucher: I started learning Chinese from a book, a CD player. I listened and memorized it, that was the way. Now there are more apps with all kinds of resources. I still want to say if you are interested, you will work hard, be self-disciplined, and you will find some resources. Finding resources is the first stage, after that, you have to communicate with others while continuing to learn the language and the logical thinking of the native culture. This is the most interesting part.

4.Can you recommend a book?

Boucher: In fact, apart from books related to sociology and my academic research, I don't have much time to read other books. I was impressed with Wolf Totem, which contains thoughts on man and nature. In addition, I was interested in George Orwell's books, especially 1984 and Animal Farm, novels which allowed me to reflect on anti-Utopian thought. They also provided me with an opportunity to reflect on anti-ideal society and our own outlook on social values.

Interviewed by Southern Metropolis Daily

Translated by Shenzhen Daily