Table Tennis

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

You've been to San Francisco. You know not to call it "Frisco," not to expect ample parking, not to forget your sweater. You know the Powell Street cable cars run through Union Square and where to find the Golden Gate Bridge. You know that most days, the Oakland Airport works as well as SFO, sometimes better. But for a small city (about 7 miles by 7 miles), San Francisco changes fast, especially the restaurants. If your itinerary is dominated by reassuring old favorites (Union Square, again!

The head coach of China's tennis table team has received permission to settle in France, an official Chinese newspaper said. However, the State Sports Commission denied Xu Shaofa had moved permanently to France and said he had not quit or been fired.

It might have been a chance meeting or a cunning act of propaganda, but the encounter more than 40 years ago between two pingpong champions - one Chinese, the other American - launched what President Nixon would call "the week that changed the world. " Zhuang Zedong, the captain of the Chinese team competing at the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Japan, was at the back of his team's bus when its doors swung open for a straggler, American juniors champion Glenn Cowan. With the United States and China still stuck in the Cold War, none of the Chinese players dared utter a word to the American.

Top-seeded Yinghua Gheng of Gaithersburg, Md., defeated Ekun Abass of New York to win the over-40 men's singles title in the U.S. National Seniors table tennis tournament Sunday at Leisure World in Laguna Hills. Gheng won, 21-18, 21-17, 16-21, 21-16. In the under-40 doubles final, Cindy Cooper of San Diego and Attila Malek of Costa Mesa defeated Herbert Lau of Huntington Beach and George Brathwaite of New York, 19-21, 21-15, 22-21.

Dan Seemiller, who won his first seniors table tennis championship a year ago, will defend his title beginning today at the sixth National Seniors Open at Leisure World in Laguna Hills. Seemiller, a five-time national champion from Pittsburgh, will be among several nationally known players at the event. Competition starts at 9 a.m. today, continuing through Monday.

Men's and women's teams from the People's Republic of China will compete in the third annual California International table tennis tournament Saturday and Sunday at Alhambra High School. Also entered are teams from Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India and the United States. The Chinese team is led by Geng Lijuan, the No. 1 women's player in the world.

The biggest Hollywood hit of last year, "Forrest Gump," gave table tennis some much-needed publicity. But players at the National Senior Table Tennis Tournament in Leisure World said they wish the simpleton from the South could have given their sport something else--credibility.

Jean-Phillipe Gatien of France, the top-seeded player and defending world champion, withdrew from the U.S. Open Table Tennis Championships because of a leg injury. Two Swedes are now the favorites in the competition, which begins today at the Anaheim Convention Center. They are Jan Ove Walden, ranked second in the world men's singles rankings, and Jorgen Persson, who won the 1991 world title. In all, 850 players from 37 countries will compete for $80,000 in prize money.

One quick peek into Exhibit Hall A of the San Diego Convention Center in the next two days, and about the only thing to strike a chord of recognition would be the tables. Everything else has undergone partial to radical transformations. The balls are different, the paddles are different, the apparel is different, even the name is fighting to establish its own identity. Sixty tables have been set up to accommodate the 350 players competing in the 34 events of the U.S. Table Tennis Assn.

Grab your lucky rabbit's foot, modern pentathlon fans (all 12 of you). Your sport could be dropped from the Summer Olympics on Tuesday. That is when International Olympic Committee leaders will decide which sport to drop from the Summer Olympics beginning in 2020. The IOC will also review preparations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia - less than a year away - and the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. The sports expected to be on the hot seat for removal besides modern pentathlon: Taekwondo, wrestling, badminton and table tennis.

Susan Sarandon and hotelier Andre Balazs sit side-by-side watching Pasadena's 16-year-old Olympic pingpong prodigy Erica Wu battle her opponent in a heated game of table tennis. Their eyes follow the tiny white ball, back and forth, back and forth. A breathless announcer in a tacky gold jacket tells the crowd, “It takes a royal couple like Andre and Susan to make this thing happen! I've never seen this in the history of table tennis!” Indeed, this is a rare moment for pingpong, which until a few years ago was associated with dank basements and cheap beer.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of Aug. 5 - 11 in PDF format This week's TV Movies   SERIES Final Witness: This new episode tells the story of a Russian-born doctor who went missing from her home in Oakland, in September 2006. Her estranged husband, a computer genius, looked good for the crime (10 p.m. ABC). America's Lost Treasures:  In this new episode from New Orleans, Curt and Kinga check out treasures at the Friends of the Cabildo Museum (10 p.m. National Geographic)

Click here to download TV listings for the week of Aug. 5 - 11 in PDF format This week's TV Movies     SERIES Shipping Wars: The cutthroat world of heavy-duty movers is the subject of this unscripted series, returning for a new season tonight with back-to-back episodes that follow Roy Garber, Scott and Suzanne Bawcom, and three other independent contractors (9 and 9:30 p.m. A&E). Beverly Hills Nannies:   In this new episode Amanda readies for a blind date by getting a colonic (9 p.m. ABC Family)

Click here to download TV listings for the week of Aug. 5 - 11 in PDF format This week's TV Movies   SERIES The Pioneer Woman: In the season premiere, the ranch workers need to torch two barns. Afterward, they cool down with homemade frozen pops (10:30 a.m. Food). SPECIALS 2012 Pro Football Hall of Fame Induction:   The 2012 class of enshrinees are honored in Canton, Ohio (4 p.m. ESPN). How Will the World End?  Samuel L. Jackson hosts an exploration into how likely a global apocalypse is, from a scientific point of view, in this new special (8 p.m. Discovery)

LONDON - Shortly before 9:30 a.m., Barbara Mulroney settles into her seat at the ExCeL Centre and thumbs through her souvenir table tennis program. Inside the booklet, the native Londoner sees the names of two athletes who will be competing in the preliminary rounds: Olufunke Oshonaike of Nigeria and Neda Shahsavari of Iran. Mulroney doesn't have the foggiest idea who they are or let alone how to pronounce their names. "No matter," she says, smiling. "I'm at an Olympic event. That's what matters.

Five-time national table tennis champion Dan Seemiller will compete in his first seniors tournament this weekend when the nation's top players converge in Laguna Hills for the National Seniors Open at Leisure World. Seemiller, who also has held men's doubles and mixed doubles titles, became eligible for seniors competition June 13 when he turned 40. In the 40-and-over singles bracket, which begins at 11 a.m.

Click here to download TV listings for the week of July 29 - Aug. 4 in PDF format This week's TV Movies   SERIES Hideous Houses:   In this new home-renovation series experts give neighborhood eyesores much-needed makeovers (10 a.m. A&E). MOVIES What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?   Aging screen queens Bette Davis and Joan Crawford reinvented themselves as scream queens in this campy 1962 horror tale, with Davis scoring an Oscar nomination as a demented former child star who torments her disabled sister (Crawford)