Jing Yi Graham's sporting and personal journey can only be described as remarkable.
From running back into her house to rescue her table tennis bat during an earthquake, to retiring from the sport at 20.
She left her native China to come to Northern Ireland to help develop the game, representing her adopted country at two Commonwealth Games, one as a player the other as a coach and now helping to prepare the team for Birmingham in the summer.
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It was a primary school teacher that encouraged Jing Yi to start playing table tennis at an early age.
“Table tennis in China is a very popular sport, so my teacher/coach randomly selected me out of the class. I got a lot of inspiration from the coach,” stated Jing Yi.
“I fell in love with the sport but a times it wasn’t all smooth. There were female role models in China, there were world champions, and you would see them on television so that is what would drive me.
“I do love the sport and that is why I still am involved.
“I started playing just before I turned eight and started competing in tournaments whenever I’d been playing for a couple of years.
“The first tournament I played in I won and that encouraged me to keep going, at primary school I won the singles, and we won the teams, we retained the title for three years in a row.
“The province where I came from Tianjin the school was very strong.”
In August 1976 disaster struck Jing Yi’s home province.
She was eight at the time when there was an earthquake where she lived.
"We were very close to the centre, 260,000 died because of the earthquake," she said.
“It was 3am, mum wasn’t there as she was working at the time. My dad woke me up and said ‘run’ so we ran 100 metres and from the house and I said, ‘I’ve forgot something my table tennis bat'.
“So, I ran back, the roof had already fallen down and I was searching with my hand, and I remembered where I had put it the previous night, so I got my bat case and went let’s go.”
After rescuing her bat, Jing Yi continued her table tennis development.
“I went to the academy full-time, which is a table tennis centre," she said.
"I was No1 selection in the province, we had a one-year camp and then after that you are finally selected for the professional team, and I was.
“I finished the equivalent of my GCSEs and the centre still wanted me, so I went, I continued to study a bit and played full-time for the province until my first retirement at 20.”
Jing Yi made the move to Northern Ireland aged 20 years old.
“Someone from Ireland came to my province and wanted to have someone come over and help with the development of table tennis, they wanted a good a player and someone who could speak a bit of English," she explained.
“I was a junior development officer for table tennis part-time. We didn’t have much money, but the executive committee supported me and drove the sport.
“We got the junior provincial title back in the early 2000’s after 23 years and that was a very strong response in terms of Ulster junior development, and we have held the interprovincial ever since.
“We held the senior and junior titles for several years. I went from junior development to director of coaching and as we got more funding I was able to quit my job and in 2006 I had a full-time post.
“In 2009 I was appointed as a high-performance coach and table tennis was seen as a high-performance sport which was never the case it was always participation.
“We had three of the top four in the men’s game in Ireland from Ulster and in the women’s game all top four were from Ulster.”
Jing Yi went to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester as a player and four years later in Melbourne as a coach.
“Manchester was very good, we were a small team and table tennis is a minority sport and we were all together and the team spirit was very good," she recalls.
“In Melbourne I was coaching the men’s team we didn’t send a women’s team, I was a female coach taking the men’s team.
“We finished in ninth position which was a very good result for us because we were amateur and five of the top eight were all full time.”
Team NI will be hoping send players to Birmingham in the summer pending qualification.
“The target in Birmingham will be top eight and that is what we are trying to achieve, at the last Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast we got top eight," Jing Yi said.
“We won’t be going to Birmingham just to be tourists.”
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