Tough, televised competition at home is creating a world-class breed of Taiwanese pool players.
Toward the end of 1999, Liu Shin-mei chalked up her cue, walked over to the table, and made the shot of her life. It was in Alicante, Spain, and when she sank the last nine-ball on the table, she instantly put herself in the top place of the women's division of the World Pool Championship (WPC), winning a narrow victory over World No. 2 Allison Fisher from the UK who had held the championship title for three consecutive years.
Liu's victory not only displaced Fisher, but also shouldered aside another Taiwanese athlete as the world's top woman pool player, according to the World Pool-Billiard Association, the contest's chief organizer. Not that she is about to rest on her laurels. She may be No. 1, but she still works hard at honing her skills, and says it is her aim to give her opponents "a very hard time at each game."
Liu is just one of many Taiwanese athletes who have excelled at billiards on the international sports scene. In July this year, the pool queen went to the World Trade Center in Taipei to watch her male counterparts compete with the world's leading players for top WPC titles and a total prize purse of US$350,000, the largest ever in the sport's history. Although 25-year-old Chang Pei-wei lost the top prize in the final match, four Taiwanese made it into the quarter-finals against four foreign players, recording the country's best performance ever in the annual event.
"It's a shock to the international billiards community," says 37-year-old Chao Fong-pang, who came fifth, and who has won two championships, in 1993 and 2000 at the same event. "We're absolutely the sport's world power," says Chao. Meanwhile, Alex Pagulayan from Canada, who defeated Chang and came out on top this year, described Taiwanese and Filipinos as "the most dangerous players in the world."
Chao is not exaggerating, which is even more of an achievement given that not so long ago billiards was considered a hoodlum's game in Taiwan.
Nevertheless, American-style pocket billiards has had a following in Taiwan since its introduction two decades ago, with nine-ball leading the popularity stakes. The game takes its name from the number of balls, and players start with the lowest -numbered ball on the table first. The player who pockets the nine-ball wins. According to the Chinese Taipei Billiards Association (CTBA), established in 1990, more than 1 million people frequently visit the country's 1,200 poolrooms. Approximately seven out of 10 players are between the ages of 18 and 22.
When Chao and Liu started playing in the 1980s, nearly everybody they knew had a negative impression of the game. Liu says she actually thought pool--played in an air-conditioned room--a much more pleasant sport than her previous outdoor pursuits. But that did not stop the average person from associating the game with teenagers gathered around pool tables in dimly lit rooms, bad boys with nothing better to do than cut classes, smoke cigarettes, drink, curse, and fight.
In 1990, even the government turned on the game. When the Ministry of Education launched a campaign against bad influences such as video arcades, pachinko parlors, and karaoke bars, billiard halls were also included in the mix, and the result was that people under 18 were restricted from entering pool halls.
Liu remembers how her family tried to dissuade her from playing pool. Her father, using a popular saying, told her that the three dumbest things a young person could do were play pool, smoke, and have a boyfriend.
The government's response to the sport's bad reputation riled some of the game's ardent followers. Despite his anger at the government's hostility toward billiards, Tu Yung-hui, the CTBA's founder and now its vice president, decided to launch a campaign to distinguish his organization's member businesses from those associated with gangsters.
Tu wanted to change the government's and the general public's view of the game. "We had to make it clear that certain bad examples don't represent our business," he says. "More significantly, we had to prove that billiards could be a regular competitive sport just like any other." As a result, the CTBA started to organize and seek sponsorship for billiards competitions. The organization also set up a ranking system for professional players while establishing guidelines for players, referees, trainers, and poolroom operators.
Most of the competitions were televised events, and now people watch pool on TV every week. The wide range of TV audiences has contributed to growing acceptance of the game as a legitimate sport and has also helped to create a steadily growing fan base. As for the players, Tu says that they get used to performing in front of the camera as time goes by, noting that this is one of local players' secrets when it comes time to play in the spotlight internationally.
Liu agrees. She says she would have lost the 1999 world championship had she not overcome her camera fright in a televised competition that lasted for seven months earlier that year.
Another Taiwanese player also won the top prize at the same year's WPC junior division, held for athletes below the age of 20. Since 1992, Taiwan has procured seven such titles. A crucial event came in December, 1998, when the 13th Asian Games was held in Bangkok. Among the four gold medals for billiards, the Taiwanese team took three, plus two silvers and a bronze. Chao, who took one gold, one silver, and one bronze, became a hero all over Asia. "For our country, which is not a world power in sports," says Chang Fen-fen, director of the International Department at Cabinet-level National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, "the Asian Games, rather than the Olympic Games, is the real international stage." She says the turnaround in billiards' reputation reached its apex in the two years following Chao's success--in 2000 there were three times the current number of poolrooms and more than 70,000 tables.
Taiwanese players' success and the CTBA's efforts finally bore fruit in 1999, when the government began warming to the sport. Pool halls were no longer looked at as businesses that needed close monitoring and heavy regulation, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs decided that pool halls were commercial establishments that allowed people to play competitive sports. As the law barring under 18-year-olds from pool halls was rescinded, Chao notes that at a billiards summer camp he organized this year kids often played the game with their parents.
And for children who are serious about billiards, some high schools in Taipei--notably Fuhsing Senior High School--are offering the sport to students. Tu says he hopes that schools on all levels, including elementary schools, will accept billiards as a part of their sports program. "It only costs NT$30,000 (US$882) or NT$40,000 (US$1,176) to buy a pool table and other supplies," he says.
As for mature players like Liu, universities offer opportunities for advanced study and the acquisition of academic qualifications for coaching positions and competition organizers. Liu is now a student at the Taipei Physical Education College's Department of Recreation and Sports Management. She has learned how to organize billiards competitions and run a proper training program or a summer camp for the general public. "This knowledge makes me more secure about my future while I pursue my career or play a game of pool," she says.
In the meantime her sights are set on an open competition in Japan, where she hopes to prove once again that Taiwan's players are "dangerous."