How to Become a Gear Sect Master?
At first, this question stumped me a bit. “Gear sect” seems profound. After silently repeating it many times in my heart, I grew more silent.
Generally, having “gear” in your heart makes you a gear-sect master.
This is a bit like cultivating immortality or worshipping Buddha. With Buddha in your heart, your eyes see Buddha. If you often think of blades’ and rubbers’ effects, with love and exploration for different gear, you are a gear-sect master. This contrasts with the technique-sect master. When you analyze problems more from the technical angle, you are a technique-sect master. If you immerse more from the gear angle, you are probably a gear-sect master. Anyway, gear sect has no high or low — everyone can have their own gear-sect perspective. It is not simply who is right or wrong. We can of course debate, but the gear-sect world should embrace all rivers. And gear sect can coexist with technique sect — in different periods, you can switch between the two identities. For example, Ma Long is a technical master and also a bat-burning expert. And stars who can use different blades or rubbers in group and knockout stages — Lee Sangsu, Franziska, Huang Youzheng, Koki Niwa — can be seen as both gear-sect and technique-sect masters, because they too are keen on technical progress. Their reason for becoming gear-sect masters is even to become better technique-sect masters.
Gear sect may have no high or low, but the level differs.
For example, a few days ago I wrote about Kenji Matsudaira — his main and spare blades differ by 1g, and he can hit out the difference. Kasumi Ishikawa can hit out different batches’ differences, so she fixates on a certain batch of Vis. Here “batch” is not the code, but really the “batch.” I have to say bat-burning also relates to talent. Some have keener feel, hitting out tiny differences. Those who can hit out subtle things are naturally at a different level. They can feel the transparency and clarity inside Stiga Sweden-made blades, the big sweet spot and high error-tolerance of DHS custom blades, the better wrapping and energy-storage feel in Butterfly’s custom craft. I have to say, besides the unhappiness of spending money, becoming a gear-sect master really is a joyful thing. But just as a poet, with poetic talent, easily attaches sentimentality, friends with keener feel and higher gear-sect level often grow more sensitive to gear. I recall watching Kong Linghui’s matches when young — the perfectionist would look at his bat mid-match. I recall the lore of Zhang Yining picking gear — the same rubber, a batch arrives, and she still picks sheet by sheet. So this is indeed not easy: the higher the level, the more trouble.
We gear-sect masters seem never to have grown up.
Like tinkering with mini 4WD cars as kids, obsessed with the effects of different small parts — which is smoother in friction, ramps speed more, which better reduces air resistance. Or in the martial-arts world of films and dramas, how many divine weapons did we once imagine? And you realize: we gear-sect masters seem never to have changed. Whether in games or reality, “equipment” is so important and so fun. Flip through the many table tennis WeChat groups — some talk old grown-up tales, some talk technique, but unknowingly, gear sect became the bigger group. How many little boys and old boys discuss what blade and rubber play better, what combination has surprising effects. When I meet a primary-school kid at the hall, asked “are you the Heima who writes about bats? I use the 968-8”; when my twenty-something junior says her dad and grandpa are both my account’s followers — and adds she does not actually know me, her dad and grandpa brought me up first. I feel a bit melancholy while also a bit satisfied. How many people has this gear-sect world linked!