holy carp that was painful to watch... 

"such a gentle, kind, and warm guy is very likable..." 

very much rude.

ZJK or FZD?

ZJK

Girl:  Here's our gift for you.

ZJK:  Facepalm... LOL!

What happens after he walked away is this: his assistant goes up to the girls and says "You'll have to excuse Jike, he gets a bit emotional right before a tournament.  He did tell me that you can both give him a full body rubdown after he's done with his matches.  What do you think?"

Girls:  Zhang Jike CHA YO!!!

Assistant:  Great.  Also, please take those f#!*ing fans out of your face.  It's very annoying.

yea once i saw this i was like "did they really just post this?...."

hilarious 

hahaha good one friend

If there's anything that table tennis needs even more than a Back to the Future approach to this hemophiliac sport, it's fangirls.

Note to Zhang Jike:  wait until you've become an established pop star.  Then you can brush off the mobs of fangirls waiting to simply get a glance of you and take your picture on their smartphones with a scrawled autograph or two, a slight smile and a wave, and exit stage right.

Yeah.  He drives a Lamborghini, will probably be a big obnoxious pop star, and either of us can sing him off the stage.  Life just ain't fair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpUnJhx1cHc" rel="nofollow - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpUnJhx1cHc

But, like so much these days, his abilities as a singer are overhyped.  I have heard folksingers, jazz singers, pop singers from the '20s through the '80s, oratorio and opera singers, solo singers of renaissance music, country music singers, blues singers and singers from not only the United States and Europe but also Central and South America, the Middle East and Asia and Australia and Africa with far better, more emotional, and more arresting voices than Zhang has.  All of my classmates who were voice majors at the Cleveland Institute of Music had better, more flexible, and more sonorous voices than Zhang.

I believe that I myself at age 75 retain a better and more emotional and sonorous voice than Zhang, though I certainly would not care to face him across a table tennis table.  I studied voice for five years, three years with a professor of voice at the Cleveland Institute of Music who was also cantor at the Beechwold Synagogue in Beechwold, Ohio.  In the summer of 1971 I attended a class in vocal physiology given by Josephine Estill, a remarkable dramatic soprano who devoted her 90 year life to developing students all around the world who could teach people with vocal problems how to speak and sing more freely and efficiently.  So I think I know a little about singing and what it takes to make a truly inspiring singer, whether having had training, as I did, or whether simply having a natural affinity for singing.

I have recorded, all at O'Malley's and The Hut bars in Tucson, Arizona, six songs to YouTube, four of them unaccompanied and four never, such as an early 18th century aria, Sebben Crudele, sung in a bar before, let alone unaccompanied.  This when I was 70 years old.  They can be heard on bmann1942's Channel and hughesst.com.

he needs attention

Heck, I don't know whether or not my hardbat World Champion heroes, Barna, Bergmann, Leach and Sido could carry a tune.

And it ain't easy, I would suppose, to entertain in front of adoring fangirls and people in the audience and people watching on television.

Okay.  Now to smackman.  If you want to hear artistry as opposed to entertainment, listen on YouTube to your countrywoman Kiri Te Kanawa.  She was one of the finest sopranos of the 20th century.

In fact that is manifestly not the case, and I am shocked -- SHOCKED -- that a table tennis historian like Berndt did not know this, indeed it seriously calls into the question every contention he has ever made.  Here is the horrible proof (and indeed, both of these are world champions, one in singles, and indeed my heroes as a young player).  Perhaps, though, Berndt managed to get it out of his mind.  That would be forgivable.

And if you really are really masochistic, you can still buy it.

http://www.amazon.com/Pingis-%C3%A4r-toppen/dp/B00IGQKUW8" rel="nofollow - http://www.amazon.com/Pingis-%C3%A4r-toppen/dp/B00IGQKUW8

One recording in a studio has made many pop stars Berndt!  They are called One Hit Wonders.

But of course my post was tongue in cheek. 

Actually Wikipedia has an extensive list of one-hit wonders.  It includes people, er, performers, like Steve Martin (for King Tut, 1978), Kermit the Frog (1979), Jerry Lewis (Rockabye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody, 1956), Senator Everett Dirksen (Gallant Men, 1966), and many others who were not regarded as actual singers (or in the case of Kermit, actual people) but better known for other things.   

But who among us can forget Moon Unit Zappa or the Jo Boxers, or Max Headroom?

In any case, admit it Berndt.  You were unaware of this atrocity committed by the two Swedish table tennis stars (one of whom quite sadly is no longer with us).