Fan Zhendong's German Chapter Opens With a Question About How He Wants to Be Remembered
In a promotional film for his new German club Borussia Düsseldorf, the Chinese table-tennis star was asked how he hopes fans will remember him when he retires. His answer — that titles go on the résumé but the person stays in the heart — has become the week's most-shared sentiment in Chinese sport.
The film runs like a tourism ad with a very specific guest: an open-top bus through Düsseldorf, the Rhine Tower and the Media Harbour, a lap of the castle square, a short jog through the old town, and a climb most of the way up the ARAG Tower, headquarters of the club's main sponsor. The guest is Fan Zhendong, the Chinese table-tennis star now playing his club table tennis for Borussia Düsseldorf in the German league, and the guides are his new teammates — along with Timo Boll, the veteran German great and a longtime friend of Fan's.
Near the end, Boll asks the question the film exists to carry: when he eventually finishes playing, how does he want people to remember him? Fan's answer, delivered with a smile, is now all over Chinese social media: "I hope that when I end my career, every fan thinks I was a good person and a good player — and I hope I can help the club win more matches and more titles." The line fans have seized on comes compressed into an aphorism of his own: "Titles go into the résumé; the person stays in the heart" (冠军会写进履历，做人会留在人心里).
A fan translation of the exchange has been liked more than 18,000 times, and the meaning of the move has run through a Zhihu question and commentary all week. It is not new ground for him, either: in a 2019 interview, asked about his own future, Fan pointed to Boll as the model and said that "only a long career makes a legend" — the wish to be playing, and wanted, deep into his thirties was there before the German league was.
The Chinese embassy in Berlin has taken notice too: in its National Day message this week it cited the "Fan Zhendong effect" — alongside bilateral trade of 112.65 billion US dollars in the first half of the year — as proof of the friendship the two countries' publics still extend each other. And for a sport whose domestic fan environment has been under scrutiny at home, with players and clubs pushing back against the fandom that follows it, the framing of the Düsseldorf film is pointedly old-fashioned: a champion introduced to a city as a neighbour, not an idol. The German season is long and the club's ambitions are stated; the season ahead will test the other half of the bargain — the club trophies Fan says he wants to win for Düsseldorf.