‘Japanese Doll’ Ai Fukuhara breaks China’s heart with retirement from table tennis
- Social media darling will build her family and work to promote the sport
- Fans respond with an outpouring of affection for her deep ties to the country
Table tennis icon Ai Fukuhara, known to her millions of fans in China as the “Japanese Doll”, announced her retirement on Sunday, causing an outpouring of affection on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.
Unusually for a Japanese player, Fukuhara has more than 3.9 million social media followers in China who adore her because of her deep ties to the country.
She has been training with the Chinese national table tennis team in the northern Liaoning province since she was five and speaks fluent “Dongbei hua”, the northern Chinese dialect.
“Thank you all the province teams for letting me train with you. I feel my skills have improved greatly since I began training in China,” Fukuhara said in the Weibo post announcing her retirement.
She also thanked her fans for their support.
“Now that there are so many great players in the team, I can finally let go of the pressure that I have been putting on myself. From now on I want to work to promote table tennis,” Fukuhara wrote in Chinese, adding that she was retiring to build her family.