MEET ERIN
"A TABLE, NOT A FLOOR"
Erin Li's first memory of table tennis is, technically, wrong. When her uncle's friend first asked a young Erin if she wanted to try the sport, she pictured something played on the floor. It wasn't until the next day — when her uncle brought home an actual table tennis table — that she realized her mistake. She still remembers that small correction, table instead of floor, as the moment the sport actually began for her.
"DREAMING ELSEWHERE"
What followed was ten years with the Yunnan provincial team, the kind of immersive, disciplined training that turns a curious kid into a professional athlete. But even as a young player, Erin was pulled by something beyond the sport itself — she loved foreign languages, and she dreamed of traveling. Table tennis, it turned out, would be the thing that finally took her there.
"THE DOOR OPENS"
The door opened through a friend: Mads, a Danish table tennis coach she met in Yunnan. Through his connections, Erin found her way to Sjørring Table Tennis Club in Denmark — a country she'd never set foot in, on the other side of the world from everything she knew. She spent two years there, playing in the Danish league and coaching junior players, before a stretch training in the USA extended her time abroad even further.
"COMING HOME TO BUILD SOMETHING"
By 2014, Erin had been away from home for 14 years. She made the decision to return to China — not just for the sport, but for her family, and for her hometown. She wanted to give something back to the community that raised her, so she opened Lexiang Table Tennis Club and spent the next nine years building it, training young players with the professional-level technique she'd absorbed across two continents.
"SOMETHING SHIFTED"
But after nine years, something shifted. Erin began to feel that her small hometown, for all it meant to her, had also become a kind of ceiling. She wanted to see more of the world again — not just more table tennis, but more of everything: new skills, new inspiration, a bigger view of what her life and career could look like. In 2023, she left for Sydney, Australia, where she's since become a top-5 ranked female player nationally, a national champion in Women's Team and Women's Doubles, and a coach at RTTC Table Tennis Academy.
"NOT LEFT TO LUCK"
It was in Sydney that the idea for Ping Path actually began — not from a business plan, but from frustration. When Erin searched online for information about coaching jobs abroad, she found almost nothing. No dedicated platform, no central resource — just scattered vacancy posts on social media, if a club happened to post one at all. She realized she wasn't the only one hitting this wall. Coaches everywhere wanted to work abroad but had no clear path to get there. Players — both foreign players wanting to train in China, and Chinese players wanting to train overseas — were stuck relying on word-of-mouth, asking friends, or cold-contacting clubs directly, simply because no one had built a better way. Erin had lived that exact gap herself, once, as a young player who only found her way to Denmark because she happened to meet the right person at the right time. Ping Path exists so that finding the right path doesn't have to depend on luck.
As Ping Path grows, we're also exploring new ways to support top-level athletes and coaches at every stage of their careers.
MOMENTS ALONG THE PATH
