Li Gu Cares for His Home City

Li Gu is little known to most Chinese, but almost everyone in China knows Jan-Ove Waldner, a world-class Swedish pingpong legend who bravely, single-handedly, triumphantly fought the Chinese pingpong hegemony for 20 years. Now a Swedish resident with business ties across Europe, Li Gu is the manager of Waldner’s China affairs. Li Gu is from Tiantai, a mountainous county which is now a part of Taizhou City in central Zhejiang Province. Over the past 10 plus years, Li Gu has played a high-profile role in bridging his hometown and North European countries.

In May, 2005, Waldner came to Tiantai for a visit. Also came with Waldner were top-class Chinese pingpong players including Zhuang Zedong (three-time world champions in the 1960s) and Tong Ling (female gold medalist at Atlanta Olympaic Games). A demonstration pingpong match was staged at the stadium of a local middle school. Local people flocked to see the pingpong Olympians whose legendary careers they had watched on televisions and read in the media. A local official commented that the visit of world champions to Tiantai created two firsts: it was the first time that Tiantai people set eyes on pingpong legends and it was the first time that a sports stadium in Tiantai was so crowded that not a tiny spot could be found for even a needle to get into the stadium.

This visit was planned and organized by Li Gu.

Before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Shanghai Sports Authorities and China Pingpong Association planned to host a gathering of the world best pingpong players over the past decades in Shanghai. Invitations were sent out. But it was difficult to get Jan-Ove Waldner and Peter karlsson, another top-notch Swedish table tennis veteran, to reshuffle their schedules and find a time slot for such a visit to Shanghai. The national sports authorities said the gathering would be meaningless if the two Swedish players were absent. The organizers came to Li Gu for help. Li Gu visited the two players in Swede and Germany (they played for German clubs). The arrangements were finalized.

The gathering took place on the evening of July 16, 2009 in celebration of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Present at the gathering in Shanghai were Japanese pingpong players, world champions from Swede and South Korea and Chinese players spanning a few generations.

Waldner operates a bar named after him in Beijing. This bar was initiated and planned by Li Gu. It has become a platform of friendship between China, Swede and northern European countries. During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the bar was one of the hottest places in the Chinese capital. The world media covered the story of the bar. Sports officials, diplomats and business moguls visited the bar. Chinese pingpong big names such as Liu Guoliang and Kong Linghui in Beijing often hang out there.

Swedish Ambassador to China Mr. Börje Ljunggren once commented during a visit to the bar that Li Gu could often do more than diplomats.

Two-way International Exchanges

Since the end of 1990s, Li Gu has brought businesspeople from Northern European countries to visit Taizhou City, a manufacturing powerhouse in Zhejiang. Joint ventures, cooperation projects and orders have materialized out of these fruitful visits.

In 2002, the Taizhou City Government tried to further promote Taizhou by inviting the mayors of twin cities to visit Taizhou. Li Gu soon received a telephone call from his home town. He immediately realized the importance of the call. He dropped everything at hand and began to contact people he knew. He traveled across Swede and other northern European countries to make arrangements. Schedules were changed and mayors accepted invitations.

In October 2002, 28 mayors and city council presidents and representatives from 19 cities in 15 countries came to visit Taizhou. Li Gu was a chief organizer of this event.

Li Gu also acted as a chief organizer of many events in Taizhou and other places in Zhejiang. In December, 2003, foreign diplomats from 18 countries visited Taizhou. In October 2007, an international forum on community education was held in Taizhou.

Li Gu acts as a chief receptionist when government, business, culture, education delegations from Taizhou visit Swede and other northern European countries. Li Gu makes arrangements and schedules to make sure the visits can have the best results. He has never asked the Taizhou government for a cent of reimbursement for his expenses and costs over all these years. On key occasions, he also interprets for visitors. The local government of Taizhou regards Li Gu as their ambassador to northern Europe.

Li Gu was an apprentice in a local factory in Tiantai in the late 1970s. He was a good player and a smart violin player. In 1980, he went to a normal college and majored in English. He came back to teach English in a local middle school. His passionate way of teaching English was overwhelming for local students. Even today his former students still talk about his passion in teaching English and wonder jokingly if he was the real harbinger of Crazy English, a popular English teaching and learning method of today in China.

In a memoir about his alma mater, a former student, who later studied in Germany, describes Li Gu as the only talented teacher he has ever known. With his bold ideas and practices in teaching, Li Gu was ahead of his time. He quit after a stormy dispute with the school authorities. In the late 1980s he worked as an interpreter and foreign affairs officer for a joint venture in Taizhou. Then he went to Beijing for further career development. Now he has established himself as a business success in Swede and other European countries. Today, Li Gu runs business in Europe and China.