Shanghai Daily news

On a day when China won its first gold medal in the mixed doubles at the 48th World Table Tennis Championships, an up-and-coming Dane forced the first crack in the host's wall of dominance with a shell-shocked 4-0 whitewash of the third seed Wang Hao in the fourth round.
Michael Maze, 23, finally stood up to the role of David against the all-conquering Chinese Goliath as the tournament entered its fourth day at the Shanghai Grand Stage yesterday.
His 11-9, 11-6, 12-10, 15-13 blanking of the explosive Wang, 19, in the men's singles was, surprisingly, hailed as a breakthrough by some of local fans, who are apparently tiring of the seemingly endless Chinese show.
"I am sorry for Wang Hao's loss but it's good for the tournament to have some different taste other than one Chinese victory after another," said Lou Jing, a student. "The best scenario in my mind, for any of the finals, is a final between a Chinese and a foreigner - and the title goes to the Chinese."
Earlier, Maze fought an outstanding battle with Wang Hao  and was flawless in his play.
"My returns today clearly caused problems for Wang and that was key to my victory," said Maze, who became the third and the last foreign player in the final eight. "To beat a Chinese player at his home really sent some thrills down the spine. It shows that we Europeans can get the better of them on a good day."
The Dane, on several occasions, was forced to counter Wang Hao's pin-point cross shots by playing high balls and his patient approach in the ensuing rallies always paid off as the hustling Chinese lost points.
Wang admitted that those points affected his game. "We did quite a lot of research on him beforehand and his game didn't waver off our expectations today except for the high balls."
Maze left his rival virtually no chance as the Olympic runner-up to South Korea's Ryu Seung-min did not have the lead even once until the see-saw fourth game, where the Chinese fought off two match points but netted the third to concede the tie.
Elsewhere, former world No. 1 Timo Boll of Germany almost managed to join Maze in the quarterfinals, only to see his hopes dashed in the last minute of a nail-biting clash with Chinese veteran Liu Guozheng.
The match was extended into the decisive seventh game, when the crowd went bombastic in cheering Liu. The overwhelming support from the stands encouraged the veteran to rally from 3-8 down to 15-13, rounding up a hard-fought 11-5, 3-11, 4-11, 11-5, 8-11, 11-8, 15-13 victory.
Liu faces teammate Ma Lin, a 4-0 winner over Polish Lucjian Blaszczyk, in the quarterfinal  while Maze takes on another Chinese Hao Shuai, who beat Greek Kalinikos Kreanga 4-2.
South Korea's Oh Sang-eun and Swede Peter Karlsson will battle out for a berth in the semifinal against the winner of the Wang Liqin-Chen Qi encounter.
Shanghai-born Wang Liqin made rough weather of his 4-3 win over Li Ching of Hong Kong, China, while Chen blanked Kong Linghui 4-0.
Karlsson edged past China-born Spaniard He Zhiwen 4-3 and Oh beat Jan Ove Waldner's conqueror Vladimir Samsonov of Belarus by the same scoreline.
In contrast, nothing extraordinary happened in the women's singles as Chinese filled all four berths in the semifinals. Guo Yue and Guo Yan set up a clash while Olympic champion and world No. 1 Zhang Yining, who cruised past Viktoria Pavlovich of Belarus 4-0, will entertain Hong Kong's Lin Ling today.