<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR class=msghead><TD class=msgbfr1 width="1%"> </TD><TD><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0><TBODY><TR class=msghead vAlign=top><TD class=msgF width="1%" noWrap align=right>From: </TD><TD class=msgFname width="68%" noWrap>kojakbt_89 <NOBR></NOBR> </TD><TD class=msgDate width="30%" noWrap align=right>8:51 am </TD></TR><TR class=msghead><TD class=msgT height=20 width="1%" noWrap align=right>To: </TD><TD class=msgTname width="68%" noWrap>ALL <NOBR></NOBR></TD><TD class=msgNum noWrap align=right> </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD class=msgleft rowSpan=4 width="1%"> </TD><TD class=wintiny noWrap align=right>35652.1 </TD></TR><TR><TD height=8></TD></TR><TR><TD class=msgtxt>Jul 5, 2010
the monday interview with Feng Tianwei
All eyes on Feng
Feng Tainwei wants to buy an HDB home for mum and herself, and bring more glory to Singapore
<!-- by line -->By sandra leong
http://www.straitstimes.com/Life%2521/LifePeople/Story/STIStory_549558.html
Sports heroine Feng Tianwei, nicknamed "For The Win", makes it a point to visit her dad's grave in Harbin to show him the medals she has won. -- ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG
View more photos http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/image/20100704/life8.jpghttp://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/image/20100704/life9.jpghttp://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/image/20100704/life11.jpghttp://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/image/20100704/life10.jpg
<!-- story content : start -->
It is in many ways fitting that table tennis player Feng Tianwei, Singapore's most decorated athlete in recent years, is also known to her fans here by her initials FTW - Internet slang for 'for the win'.
Last month, the World No. 2 made front page news when she beat China's top-ranked Liu Shiwen in the Liebherr World Team Table Tennis championship, paving the way for the Singapore team to wrest the gold medal from the Chinese team for the first time.
A sweat-drenched Feng, who is also an Olympic silver medallist, celebrated the triumph by collapsing onto the ground, eyes closed and fists clenched - an image that will forever be seared into the Singaporean sporting consciousness.
The day before this interview, the 23-year-old Sportswoman Of The Year and her team-mates - Li Jiawei, Sun Beibei, Wang Yuegu and Yu Mengyu - took a victory lap around Singapore and signed autographs for fans at Khatib Plaza, the National Library and Velocity @ Novena Square.
A Sunday meeting and photoshoot has to be slotted into her hectic schedule. The following day, she would be leaving for China to compete in the China Table Tennis Super League, a professional league that counts as preparation for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi and the Asian Games in Guangzhou.
Also present at the interview are four minders: one from the Singapore Table Tennis Association, one from the Singapore Sports Council and two from a public relations agency.
Feng is late because she has gone to see the doctor about an eye infection. She is 'not well' but did not want to renege on this appointment, says a minder in a rather foreboding tone. 'Please do not prolong the interview unnecessarily,' he adds.
It is a lot of hullaballoo for someone who turns out to be nothing like a diva.
Dressed in a purple T-shirt, track pants and wearing a spunky hairdo, she is easy-going, friendly and has the sort of witty personality that would inspire schoolgirl crushes. (Her 1,700 fans on Facebook would probably attest to that.)
Her eye infection is only just discernible; much of the redness and swelling is camouflaged by her black-and-white framed Armani glasses.
The Harbin native, who became a Singapore citizen in 2008, fields questions good-naturedly. Even cheeky ones like, does she have a boyfriend?
'No,' she says in Mandarin. 'I have thought about it but it's difficult to be in a relationship if you are in a different city (for tournaments) every day.
'It will be quite tiring. Why not just take it easy and play table tennis? Maybe in one or two years, I'll consider it.'
She also gets teased about this by Singapore Table Tennis Association president Lee Bee Wah.
Madam Lee, 50, who describes her charge as 'a humble player who is hungry for success', says: 'I tell her, 'If you get a gold medal at the London Olympics in 2012, I'll find you a golden boyfriend'. And she will say 'Yes, I'm waiting'.'
Feng is a regular girl. She moans about having to put on a pink Team Singapore polo T-shirt for the photoshoot, saying it does not quite go with her style, which is 'casual' and 'cool'.
At the recent Singapore Sports Awards ceremony, she showed up to collect her Sportswoman Of The Year prize in a jeans and jacket ensemble, claiming to own few dresses.
She explains: 'If I wear a skirt, it seems out of character because I have short hair and don't know how to wear make-up. But I like being trendy. I often flip through Hong Kong and Japanese fashion magazines.'
During the course of the interview, her voice hardens only when the prickly issue of her Chinese origins crops up.
Following the team's recent World Championship win, critics have again come out in full force, questioning if the victory belonged to Singapore or to an imported team of players from China.
Perhaps used to the backlash by now, she answers with surprising maturity: 'People can say a lot of things about us and you can't get upset about everything.
'I don't think about all these questions. I'm here to compete and live. The most important thing is that we raise the Singapore flag, we sing the national anthem and the glory of the win goes to Singapore.
'And I want to bring more glory to Singapore. If Singapore had not given me a platform to play, I would not have been able to show myself to the world.'
Detractors seem especially harsh this time. A Guangzhou newspaper described the Singapore team as 'wolves' who had been bred in China but who have returned to bite the hand that fed them.
It seems a no-win situation: cynical Singaporeans who take no pride in her victory versus the Chinese, who are reeling from their loss and feel she is ungrateful for defecting.
She says with a sigh: 'I represent Singapore. Some Singaporeans have accepted that, some haven't. But Singapore is the point of my focus now.
'I still go back to China to take part in the Super League. That is important because I must continue to develop my skills and experience. In a way, I haven't forsaken China.''
She adds matter-of-factly: 'I don't believe sport is defined by international boundaries. Whenever I play, I am focused only on showing my skill and what I am made of. I don't think about how I should behave just because of who I'm representing.''
It is this single-minded focus, perhaps, that has taken her this far.
When she first played for Singapore in 2007, she was ranked 73rd in the world.
She now has a tally of nine medals in the International Table Tennis Federation Pro Tours, two golds and one silver at the SEA Games and an Olympic silver from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Her world revolves around the association's training premises in Toa Payoh. She lives in a hostel there with her team-mates.
As a professional player, she gets a training allowance, with bonuses coming from the prize money she wins at various tournaments. She trains six days a week, from 9am to 7pm. She gets Sundays off and spends them running errands.
National team coach Zhou Shusen, 68, says Feng is always focused. 'If she is not training well, she never blames anyone and looks within herself to find the problem. That is a prized quality in an athlete.'
Her friends comprise mostly her teammates and a handful of Singaporeans, most of whom are fans.
One of them, 19-year-old student Joan Lim, who is president of Feng's fan club, remembers an instance when the sports star called especially to wish her good luck for her exams. 'Some fans went to the airport to send her off for a tournament but I couldn't make it because of exams. I was pleasantly surprised when she rang me from the airport,' she says.
Feng has English lessons, conducted by an association administrative officer, three to four times a week.
On English, she says: 'I can listen but I'm not so good at speaking. Because we go away for competitions for months at a time, I forget whatever I've learnt.'
She knows enough to have given herself an English name - Joy, derived from her Chinese nickname Le Le, which means 'happy'. She says: 'My family called me by that name when I was small. They said I loved to laugh.'
An only child, she owes much of her success to her family. It was her mother Li Chunping, 47, who pushed her to pick up table tennis at the age of five.
Li was then a department store worker and recreational player and wanted her daughter to learn a sport that would open doors in the future.
Feng says: 'I tried ice skating too but before we got on the ice, we had to run and that made me cry. When I played table tennis, I didn't cry or kick up any fuss.'
By age 12, she was spotted by scouts and invited to enrol in a sports school. At 14, she began playing professionally for the state squad and made it to the China national B Team two years later.
Her parents worked two shifts to pay for her training and competition expenses.
Her late father, Mr Feng Qingzhi, was a granary worker. He died in 2002 after suffering from multiple sclerosis for two years. She was just 15 and his death hit her badly.
'My mother had prepared me and we had accepted that this was fate. But it still hurt immensely,' she says.
'After he died, my mother was under a lot of pressure. But she was very strong and never asked me to stop playing.'
Her biggest regret, she has often said, is that her father never lived long enough to see her flourish in her career.
'Not only did he not see me win the world championships, but he also never saw me make it to the China national team. But I know he will be happy to see that his dream came true.'
Whenever she visits Harbin, where her now retired mother still lives, she makes it a point to visit her father's grave to show him the medals she has won.
She has yet to show her latest medal. 'I want to give it to him but I have no time to go to Harbin these few months,' she says, with a tinge of sadness.
In 2005, she left China to join the Japanese professional league. Being away from home for the first time was a shock.
'I had to do everything myself: cook, clean, do the laundry and go for competitions. We trained only four hours a day. The rest of the time, I would be alone. Sometimes I would sit at home and cry.'
Singapore came knocking two years later. At a competition in China, she was spotted by Singapore's ex-national coach Liu Guodong, who offered her citizenship and to be part of Singapore's Foreign Sports Talent Scheme.
Despite knowing little about Singapore, she accepted 'without hesitation'.
She likes the orderliness, the clean air, the seafood and the quality of life here. 'What I don't like is that there is only one season and I can't wear many of my winter clothes,' she adds with a grin.
And this might silence critics who see her as a visitor in Singapore: She plans to buy a house, probably a Housing Board flat, for her and her mum to make a life here.
'I'm looking at a newer neighbourhood, definitely not in Toa Payoh because I want a change of surroundings. I like cars too so if I live further away, I have an excuse to buy one,' she says.
Indeed, underneath all that grit and determination to excel, you get the sense that like any 23-year-old, she would like the occasional escape from training, the watchful eyes of her minders and being Singapore's shining medal hope.
'If I wasn't a table tennis player, I'd be a doctor,' she says. 'I would want to help people and make them happy. But I suppose that dream has gone to waste.'
Still, there are more dreams to conquer. The World No. 1 ranking is in sight, together with gold medals at the Commonwealth and Asian games.
'After the last gold medal, there are new competitions and new targets, a new journey,' she adds. She is gunning For The Win, no doubt.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
the monday interview with Feng Tianwei
All eyes on Feng
Feng Tainwei wants to buy an HDB home for mum and herself, and bring more glory to Singapore
<!-- by line -->By sandra leong
http://www.straitstimes.com/Life%2521/LifePeople/Story/STIStory_549558.html
Sports heroine Feng Tianwei, nicknamed "For The Win", makes it a point to visit her dad's grave in Harbin to show him the medals she has won. -- ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG
<!-- story content : start -->
It is in many ways fitting that table tennis player Feng Tianwei, Singapore's most decorated athlete in recent years, is also known to her fans here by her initials FTW - Internet slang for 'for the win'.
Last month, the World No. 2 made front page news when she beat China's top-ranked Liu Shiwen in the Liebherr World Team Table Tennis championship, paving the way for the Singapore team to wrest the gold medal from the Chinese team for the first time.
A sweat-drenched Feng, who is also an Olympic silver medallist, celebrated the triumph by collapsing onto the ground, eyes closed and fists clenched - an image that will forever be seared into the Singaporean sporting consciousness.
The day before this interview, the 23-year-old Sportswoman Of The Year and her team-mates - Li Jiawei, Sun Beibei, Wang Yuegu and Yu Mengyu - took a victory lap around Singapore and signed autographs for fans at Khatib Plaza, the National Library and Velocity @ Novena Square.
A Sunday meeting and photoshoot has to be slotted into her hectic schedule. The following day, she would be leaving for China to compete in the China Table Tennis Super League, a professional league that counts as preparation for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi and the Asian Games in Guangzhou.
Also present at the interview are four minders: one from the Singapore Table Tennis Association, one from the Singapore Sports Council and two from a public relations agency.
Feng is late because she has gone to see the doctor about an eye infection. She is 'not well' but did not want to renege on this appointment, says a minder in a rather foreboding tone. 'Please do not prolong the interview unnecessarily,' he adds.
It is a lot of hullaballoo for someone who turns out to be nothing like a diva.
Dressed in a purple T-shirt, track pants and wearing a spunky hairdo, she is easy-going, friendly and has the sort of witty personality that would inspire schoolgirl crushes. (Her 1,700 fans on Facebook would probably attest to that.)
Her eye infection is only just discernible; much of the redness and swelling is camouflaged by her black-and-white framed Armani glasses.
The Harbin native, who became a Singapore citizen in 2008, fields questions good-naturedly. Even cheeky ones like, does she have a boyfriend?
'No,' she says in Mandarin. 'I have thought about it but it's difficult to be in a relationship if you are in a different city (for tournaments) every day.
'It will be quite tiring. Why not just take it easy and play table tennis? Maybe in one or two years, I'll consider it.'
She also gets teased about this by Singapore Table Tennis Association president Lee Bee Wah.
Madam Lee, 50, who describes her charge as 'a humble player who is hungry for success', says: 'I tell her, 'If you get a gold medal at the London Olympics in 2012, I'll find you a golden boyfriend'. And she will say 'Yes, I'm waiting'.'
Feng is a regular girl. She moans about having to put on a pink Team Singapore polo T-shirt for the photoshoot, saying it does not quite go with her style, which is 'casual' and 'cool'.
At the recent Singapore Sports Awards ceremony, she showed up to collect her Sportswoman Of The Year prize in a jeans and jacket ensemble, claiming to own few dresses.
She explains: 'If I wear a skirt, it seems out of character because I have short hair and don't know how to wear make-up. But I like being trendy. I often flip through Hong Kong and Japanese fashion magazines.'
During the course of the interview, her voice hardens only when the prickly issue of her Chinese origins crops up.
Following the team's recent World Championship win, critics have again come out in full force, questioning if the victory belonged to Singapore or to an imported team of players from China.
Perhaps used to the backlash by now, she answers with surprising maturity: 'People can say a lot of things about us and you can't get upset about everything.
'I don't think about all these questions. I'm here to compete and live. The most important thing is that we raise the Singapore flag, we sing the national anthem and the glory of the win goes to Singapore.
'And I want to bring more glory to Singapore. If Singapore had not given me a platform to play, I would not have been able to show myself to the world.'
Detractors seem especially harsh this time. A Guangzhou newspaper described the Singapore team as 'wolves' who had been bred in China but who have returned to bite the hand that fed them.
It seems a no-win situation: cynical Singaporeans who take no pride in her victory versus the Chinese, who are reeling from their loss and feel she is ungrateful for defecting.
She says with a sigh: 'I represent Singapore. Some Singaporeans have accepted that, some haven't. But Singapore is the point of my focus now.
'I still go back to China to take part in the Super League. That is important because I must continue to develop my skills and experience. In a way, I haven't forsaken China.''
She adds matter-of-factly: 'I don't believe sport is defined by international boundaries. Whenever I play, I am focused only on showing my skill and what I am made of. I don't think about how I should behave just because of who I'm representing.''
It is this single-minded focus, perhaps, that has taken her this far.
When she first played for Singapore in 2007, she was ranked 73rd in the world.
She now has a tally of nine medals in the International Table Tennis Federation Pro Tours, two golds and one silver at the SEA Games and an Olympic silver from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Her world revolves around the association's training premises in Toa Payoh. She lives in a hostel there with her team-mates.
As a professional player, she gets a training allowance, with bonuses coming from the prize money she wins at various tournaments. She trains six days a week, from 9am to 7pm. She gets Sundays off and spends them running errands.
National team coach Zhou Shusen, 68, says Feng is always focused. 'If she is not training well, she never blames anyone and looks within herself to find the problem. That is a prized quality in an athlete.'
Her friends comprise mostly her teammates and a handful of Singaporeans, most of whom are fans.
One of them, 19-year-old student Joan Lim, who is president of Feng's fan club, remembers an instance when the sports star called especially to wish her good luck for her exams. 'Some fans went to the airport to send her off for a tournament but I couldn't make it because of exams. I was pleasantly surprised when she rang me from the airport,' she says.
Feng has English lessons, conducted by an association administrative officer, three to four times a week.
On English, she says: 'I can listen but I'm not so good at speaking. Because we go away for competitions for months at a time, I forget whatever I've learnt.'
She knows enough to have given herself an English name - Joy, derived from her Chinese nickname Le Le, which means 'happy'. She says: 'My family called me by that name when I was small. They said I loved to laugh.'
An only child, she owes much of her success to her family. It was her mother Li Chunping, 47, who pushed her to pick up table tennis at the age of five.
Li was then a department store worker and recreational player and wanted her daughter to learn a sport that would open doors in the future.
Feng says: 'I tried ice skating too but before we got on the ice, we had to run and that made me cry. When I played table tennis, I didn't cry or kick up any fuss.'
By age 12, she was spotted by scouts and invited to enrol in a sports school. At 14, she began playing professionally for the state squad and made it to the China national B Team two years later.
Her parents worked two shifts to pay for her training and competition expenses.
Her late father, Mr Feng Qingzhi, was a granary worker. He died in 2002 after suffering from multiple sclerosis for two years. She was just 15 and his death hit her badly.
'My mother had prepared me and we had accepted that this was fate. But it still hurt immensely,' she says.
'After he died, my mother was under a lot of pressure. But she was very strong and never asked me to stop playing.'
Her biggest regret, she has often said, is that her father never lived long enough to see her flourish in her career.
'Not only did he not see me win the world championships, but he also never saw me make it to the China national team. But I know he will be happy to see that his dream came true.'
Whenever she visits Harbin, where her now retired mother still lives, she makes it a point to visit her father's grave to show him the medals she has won.
She has yet to show her latest medal. 'I want to give it to him but I have no time to go to Harbin these few months,' she says, with a tinge of sadness.
In 2005, she left China to join the Japanese professional league. Being away from home for the first time was a shock.
'I had to do everything myself: cook, clean, do the laundry and go for competitions. We trained only four hours a day. The rest of the time, I would be alone. Sometimes I would sit at home and cry.'
Singapore came knocking two years later. At a competition in China, she was spotted by Singapore's ex-national coach Liu Guodong, who offered her citizenship and to be part of Singapore's Foreign Sports Talent Scheme.
Despite knowing little about Singapore, she accepted 'without hesitation'.
She likes the orderliness, the clean air, the seafood and the quality of life here. 'What I don't like is that there is only one season and I can't wear many of my winter clothes,' she adds with a grin.
And this might silence critics who see her as a visitor in Singapore: She plans to buy a house, probably a Housing Board flat, for her and her mum to make a life here.
'I'm looking at a newer neighbourhood, definitely not in Toa Payoh because I want a change of surroundings. I like cars too so if I live further away, I have an excuse to buy one,' she says.
Indeed, underneath all that grit and determination to excel, you get the sense that like any 23-year-old, she would like the occasional escape from training, the watchful eyes of her minders and being Singapore's shining medal hope.
'If I wasn't a table tennis player, I'd be a doctor,' she says. 'I would want to help people and make them happy. But I suppose that dream has gone to waste.'
Still, there are more dreams to conquer. The World No. 1 ranking is in sight, together with gold medals at the Commonwealth and Asian games.
'After the last gold medal, there are new competitions and new targets, a new journey,' she adds. She is gunning For The Win, no doubt.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
