New book by Bettine Vriesekoop

Just recently, table tennis legend Bettine Vriesekoop hit a ball on Balboa Square. As an ambassador for her sport, she is pushing for even more outdoor activities in the city. “Everywhere in Amsterdam you can find places where you can play table tennis outdoors,” she says.  

by Corrie Verkerk 

It is busy on Balboaplein, around the match tables. But often, Bettine Vriesekoop knows, those attributes – here and there in the city – look somewhat deserted. That must, can, be done better, she thinks. “Playing sports together outdoors also means meeting each other and getting to know each other better.” And exercise is always good. Not everyone on the square knows that they are facing the woman who can call herself multiple European champion, represented our country at the Olympics and was named ‘player of the century’ in 1999. She doesn’t flaunt about that either. “There must be a new generation now that has no idea who I am,” she said. 

Frying pan 
She is now past 60 herself and those glorious times are a memory. But she is still passionately committed, both old and young, to getting people moving. “I am grateful for everything I have been able to experience in my sport. For me it is important now, in that last stretch of my life, to be able to give something back.” Not only with her clinics in West, but also in other parts of the city. Along with her bat and frying pan. Just to show that even with such a pan you can hit a decent ball.
During corona, she often cycled from her home in Noord towards Westerpark to play a game with other visitors who had fled the house. “Sitting inside all the time was not an option for me.” As her clinics, lectures and other group activities were “on pause” for a while, she wanted to do something else. “Doing interviews at Schiphol Airport, for instance, working in a vitamin shop or as a cashier at the neighbourhood supermarket. “But they apparently saw nothing in their famous compatriot’s initiative. “I got no response at all. They probably thought I was too old. Then you are quickly written off here. In China, where I trained and lived as a correspondent for the NRC, it is very different. Chinese have respect for the elderly, and it is an art to grow old and as healthy as possible.”
Her latest publication was recently published: Chinese wijsheid in een balletje. Het spel van Tao or in English  Chinese Wisdom in a Ball. The Game of Tao. “I came up with that title myself. Am quite proud of it,” she says. And it covers the load. Through her sport AND that little ball, she became fascinated by Chinese culture, attitude to life and philosophy, pushed her boundaries. “I used to think ‘If you want to beat Chinese table tennis players, you almost have to come from another planet’. Now she knows there is a lot more to that than just training hard from your earliest childhood. I tried to apply what I heard and saw of that Chinese mentality in my own life” she looks back in her book. “Finding balance between being active and passive, waking and sleeping, training and resting, being hot and cold, winning without euphoria, losing without feeling bad.” You didn’t have to come up with that in the Dutch sports world at the time. Concepts like meditation and tai chi? All far too ‘floaty’. But, she is adamant, a Western person can still learn a lot from them. Hence the ‘wisdom in that little ball’. To convey the philosophy of the Tao, the attitude to life that has shaped and held together Chinese society (over two thousand years). “In a simple way.”

Culture shock
Yet her first encounter with China was by no means a pleasant one. “At eighteen, I went there to train,” she says. The culture shock was huge. “There was no internet yet, I didn’t speak a word of Chinese, I trained there under harsh conditions, until the blood stood in my shoes.” But then the seed was planted. Vriesekoop studied Chinese, immersed herself in Chinese health culture and, years later, developed into a successful writer of books such as Heimwee naar Peking (Homesickness for Beijing), Duizend dagen in China (A Thousand Days in China) and an extraordinary autobiography about Pearl S. Buck, the first female author to win a Nobel Prize and, like herself, lived (survived) in that faraway China.
Challenges are still there. As ambassador of Oldstars, the organisation that aims to promote the well-being of older people through sport and exercise, she carries that message with enthusiasm. “It is wonderful to live and grow older, but then with quality. And you have to do something for that.” During her clinic at Balboa Square, she noted with satisfaction that many young people showed up in addition to older participants. The right mix for socialising together. And, who knows, also with a touch of extra Eastern wisdom from their temporary Amsterdam table tennis partner. “I have said it once. I breathe China.”