Early sacrifices lead to table tennis success for Mak siblings
- Luck, skill and determination take hard-working pair from dining table to Shenzhen, then Hong Kong Games gold
- Sister has joined the Hong Kong team while brother is a coach
When siblings Mak Tze-him and Mak Tze-wing were young, they used to play ping pong on the rectangular dining table at their home in Wong Tai Sin.
“That was our favourite pastime. We would line up plastic water bottles and remote controls in the middle of the table as the net. I cannot recall how many balls fell out of the window,” said Tze-wing, who is now 20.
Table tennis has been part and parcel of the siblings’ lives. Tze-him, 23, took up the sport when he was nine. Whenever he played, Tze-wing would watch on the side, eventually joining in when she was old enough to play.
Other than going to school, the brother and sister spent almost all of their waking moments playing ping pong. They practised after class, made friends over the ping pong table, and were competing all the time.
In 2006, Tze-wing and Tze-him entered their first public meet, the Wong Tai Sin District Age Group Competition, when they were eight and 11, respectively. In 2011 and 2013, they represented their district at the Hong Kong Games, a biennial multi-sports competition among the city’s 18 districts.
