For many Chinese like 72-year-old retiree Xu Tianwu, table tennis is more than a game.

It is the national sport that brought glory to China from as early as the 1950s and even played a major role in international relations during the ping pong diplomacy period of the 1970s.

National team members are lionised, and former stars like Olympic and world champion Deng Yaping are household names.

"The reason so many Chinese consider our table tennis players to be heroes is because they bring honour and glory to China," said Xu.

"For me, ping pong keeps me happy and healthy," he said as he played his daily three-hour stint at one of the tables found in every Beijing park.

"I hope I'll still be playing when I am 80."

However, not far from the park where Xu plays his daily ping pong marathon, others are enjoying a different, more edgy experience in the Dongdan open-air basketball ground just east of central Tiananmen Square.

"Basketball lights up my life, it's the only fun for me and I play as much as I can," said Zhao Chao, 18, who says he puts in at least an hour on the court each day.

Image matters to younger Chinese -- and table tennis is seen more and more as the game of an older generation who had no other leisure choices.

The British-born game was imported into China in the early 20th century and became so popular that many Chinese believe that it is their own invention along with gunpowder and printing.

"Ping pong expresses the dexterity, speed and agility of the Chinese," said Xu.

Easy to learn and cheap to play, the sport gained a wide following after the founding of communist China in 1949. It brought China its first taste of international sporting glory with a world title in 1959.

Under late strongman Mao Zedong -- who launched the 1950s slogan "Develop a sports movement, stengthen the physical condition of the people" -- table tennis was the diplomatic tool for a rapprochement with Washington.

In 1971, Mao invited the US table tennis team to China for a series of friendly matches that ended a lengthy period of enmity and set the wheels in motion for the 1979 normalisation of US-China ties.

At the Beijing Olympics, table tennis, with four gold medals almost assured, is also the sport the could help the host nation dominate the medal standings for the first time ahead of the United States.

Even though Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming is likely to get widespread media attention, Pierre Justo, head of media and research at CSM Media Research/TNS Sport, says it is too early to write ping pong's epitaph.

Table tennis has to face up to some serious challenges, including the younger generation's growing affluence and their taste for other sports.