She is the queen of table tennis in the USA, 6 times champion in her country and 4 times Olympic champion.
At 28, California-born Lily Zhang is at the peak of her career and dreams of the moment when she will compete for another medal against her compatriots at the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
Her parents are less than thrilled about the prospect. “We were always trying to get her to stop playing,” her mother, Linda Liu, told the Wall Street Journal. “We just want her to find a regular job.” Even Olympic athletes, it seems, can’t escape parental pressure to pursue their careers.
Medals or work from 9am to 5pm?
It’s the… Olympic version of the usual conflict between kids chasing unconventional career dreams and parents who want the security of a 9-to-5 job.
For every Simon Biles or Michael Phelps who can turn Olympic medals into a fortune, dozens of other athletes fight every day for distinction in much less popular sports, where sponsors are not on board. They go it alone, on a shoestring budget, traveling the world from event to event for very modest prize money and sponsorships. A string of losses can even put them under such financial pressure that they are forced to retire.
A ping pong table in the living room
The irony is that it was Linda Liu and Bob Zhang who nurtured their daughter’s love of table tennis. Immigrants from China, they wanted their son to play a sport that would connect him to his homeland. So in their Palo Alto apartment, they set up a ping-pong table in the living room. “It also served as a table where we had dinner. We just put a tablecloth on it and sat down to eat,” Li Zhang told the WSJ.
At the age of 10, and having already demonstrated her impressive talent, she began spending her summers in China, training with teams that “feed” the Chinese national team. She had the opportunity to hone her skills and learn the secret that has given China 32 of the 38 gold medals since table tennis became an Olympic sport in 1988.
Chinese athletes train up to 9 hours a day — four times more than Zhang in the US. But for her parents, table tennis was also an opportunity to boost her college applications. “If she played at the highest level, it would help her get into a good school,” her mother says.
“You made it to the London Olympics. Enough.”
At 16, she competed in the London Olympics. “You made it to the Olympics, now you can go to any university you want and focus on your studies,” she told the WSJ.
She came very close to giving up table tennis after London. But as a freshman in Berkley, California, she felt something was missing in her life. She wanted to take a break from her studies and prepare for the upcoming Olympics. Her mother was against it. “You went to the London Olympics. That’s it.”
Liu acknowledges that her attitude stems from a generational and cultural divide. “We are traditional Chinese parents. Above all, we want to focus on her studies, we want her to have a job, to be a normal girl,” she explains.
The American Dream and Your Own Dream
U.S. national team coach Jun Gao says the mentality has also ended the careers of other promising U.S. table tennis players, who at the highest level are predominantly of Asian descent. “A lot of Asian parents make their kids say goodbye to running when they get to college,” says Gao, who won a silver medal for China and began coaching the U.S. national team eight years ago.
Zhang understands why her parents, both Silicon Valley workers, want her to follow in their footsteps. “They had a hard life here and fought hard to make the American dream a reality.” But she knows what her dream is — even if it conflicts with Chinese-American customs. “I play because it makes me happy. Because I don’t want to regret not trying in 30 or 40 years.”