Nineteen-year-old Ai Fukuhara is used to the labels - child prodigy, genius table tennis girl, pint-sized champion.

A professional table tennis player since she was 10, and a member of the national team at 11, Fukuhara has long been Japan's darling of the sport.

A fluent Mandarin speaker, her enormous popularity extends to China, where she spent two years playing in the nation's cutthroat super league competition, and was mobbed by fans upon arrival this week at the Beijing airport.