When I first found out that I was coming to Beijing to cover the Olympics, I immediately began to think about what I had to absolutely see.

The first was the Great Wall, which I'm going to on Monday.

The second thing was ping pong, or table tennis as the Olympics folks call it.

So Saturday night, with no Mainers competing, I headed over to the Peking University Gymnasium and watched China, the ping pong dynasty of the world, play Korea in the semifinals.

I had to see first-hand what this sport was all about. The NBA stars here on Team USA like to say that basketball is the biggest sport in China. Maybe it is, in terms of growth.

But ping pong remains the lifeblood of China's sports. Here in the U.S., we may have basketball courts and baseball diamonds. In China, they have ping pong parks, where fathers teach sons how to play the game.

And remember, ping pong plays a very large part in America's diplomatic history with China. Ping pong diplomacy anyone? Back in 1971, the U.S. sent a ping pong team to China, the first time that country opened its borders to the West in 22 years.

That led to the resumption of diplomatic relations, led by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

Enough of the history!

China may not have invented ping pong -- England is supposed to have done that -- but its people have sure perfected it.

Having never quite grasped the concept of hitting that little plastic ball accurately, I wanted to see what the deal was.

I was amazed. You know how you go to certain ballparks, like Fenway, and there's a hum in the air all the time, like everyone is anticipating something great? Well that's what it was like in the gymnasium.

And talk about a home table advantage! Between each serve, the partisan crowd was shouting, "China, China, China.''

There was plenty of nationalism as well, with flags flying for both teams.

In the end, China won, 3-0, to advance to Monday night's gold medal game. The Koreans had a great chance to steal the first game when Sang Eun Oh was up 2-1 on Ma Lin. But Ma Lin came back to win it in five games, the crowd erupting in pure joy.

Then when Wang Hao, who seems to have rock star status, made it 2-0 in dominating fashion and the Chinese doubles closed it out.

I was amazed by the skill of the players from both teams, their ability to stand 15 to 20 feet back of the table and return shots with hard hits or spinning drops. Their serves were sneaky, spinning here and there, never going where they looked like they should.

All in all, it was time well spent.

Now I know what real ping pong looks like.

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