TAIPEI – Ai Fukuhara, a Japanese Olympic medalist, and Chiang Hung-chieh, a member of Taiwan’s 2016 Olympic table tennis team, were reportedly married earlier this month.
Japanese table tennis star Ai Fukuhara and Taiwanese table tennis player Chiang Hung-chieh recently tied the knot in Japan, a Japanese newspaper said on Thursday.
Fukuhara, an Olympic medalist, and Chiang, a member of Taiwan’s 2016 Olympic table tennis team, were married earlier this month, Japanese newspaper Nikkan Sports reported on Thursday.
As of press time, the news had yet to be confirmed by either Fukuhara or Chiang, both 27.
Chen Ching-yeh, secretary-general of Taiwan’s Chinese Taipei Table Tennis Association, said the association was not aware of the reported marriage, adding that it is a private matter and not for the association to comment on.
Sources close to the matter told local Chinese-language Apple Daily that Chiang is planning to hold a wedding ceremony in Taipei or Hsinchu before the end of the year.
The reported marriage came five months after the Japan’s No. 1 table tennis star announced on April 6 that she was officially dating Chiang.
Soon after, a Japanese tabloid reported news of the relationship and said they would soon be married. They have reportedly been dating for a year.
Previous reports in August claimed that Japan’s table tennis officials had ordered Fukuhara to delay the marriage, as they wanted her to concentrate on her training and to lead Japan’s women’s table tennis team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The reports said that Japanese officials also had objections over the marriage as it would be a “status-gap marriage,” a Japanese term referring to a couple having a significant disparity between their incomes, social status and personal values.
Japan’s table tennis association later refuted the reports about officials urging Fukuhara to delay the marriage as ungrounded.
Fukuhara is Japan’s top female table tennis player and was at one point ranked No. 4 worldwide. She has an estimated annual income of 100 million Japanese yen, while Chiang only has a world ranking of 79 and was eliminated in the first round at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Child prodigy
As the youngest player ever to become a member of the Japanese national team, she is known as “child prodigy” in table tennis and enjoys high popularity in Japan.
She is also famous in China and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, as she has been playing table tennis in China since a very young age.
Chiang, a Hsinchu native, now plays for a table tennis team under Taiwan Cooperative Bank Co. He won the men’s doubles gold medal with his partner Huang Sheng-sheng at ITTF Kuwait Open in Feb. 2015.
AFP, Reuters, The Straits Times
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