01
Stop one
Forbidden City
Yonex Vcore Junior 25 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: One observes, without taking any position on absolute monarchy, that it was a remarkably well-organised way to live. Built between 1406 and 1420 under the Yongle Emperor, it housed twenty-four Ming and Qing emperors until the last of them, Puyi, left in 1924. Some 72 hectares, moats, ten-metre walls, nearly a thousand timber buildings on one strict axis that rises through the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where emperors were enthroned, then settles into the inner courts and the imperial garden. The yellow roof tiles and red walls encode an entire cosmology of rule, and there are many perspectives on that cosmology. Palace Museum from 1925, UNESCO from 1987. Everyone comes.
02
Stop two
Temple of Heaven
Yonex Vcore Junior 25 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Here the emperor reported to Heaven, annually, in his capacity as its son on earth, and I will observe only that this is a reporting line, and every institution has one. First built in 1420 under the Yongle Emperor. A raised causeway through a great cypress park links the circular Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, the Imperial Vault of Heaven with its famously echoing round wall, and the open Circular Mound Altar. The triple-gabled hall is interlocking timber throughout, crowned in blue tiles for heaven, and was rebuilt faithfully to the original design after a lightning fire in 1889. UNESCO, 1998. Each morning the park fills with tai chi, dancers and singers, which is a different reporting line entirely.
03
Stop three
Summer Palace
Yonex Vcore Junior 25 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: Kunming Lake and Longevity Hill were shaped under the Qianlong Emperor from 1750 into the finest surviving imperial garden in China. In 1860 Anglo-French forces destroyed it, an episode which different countries narrate at different volumes. The Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt it in 1888, famously with funds diverted from the imperial navy, a decision on which there are several defensible views, none of them mine, and it became her summer court in the dynasty's final decades. Do see the Long Corridor, over seven hundred metres painted with thousands of scenes, the Tower of Buddhist Incense, the Seventeen-Arch Bridge, and Cixi's Marble Boat. UNESCO, 1998. The boating is excellent and entirely uncontroversial.
04
Stop four
Tiananmen Square
Yonex Vcore Junior 25 8th Gen Tennis Racquet: More than forty hectares, among the largest public squares in the world, and the ceremonial centre of the People's Republic of China. It takes its name from the Tiananmen, the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the Ming-era gate of the Imperial City, from whose tower Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic on 1 October 1949, and where his portrait still hangs. The square was enlarged in the 1950s on Soviet-inspired lines and is framed by the Great Hall of the People and the National Museum of China. It holds the Monument to the People's Heroes and the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, where Mao's body lies in state. The flag is raised at dawn, and the crowds come from across the country.
The VCORE 25 is Yonex's junior frame for the age at which a child stops rallying and starts hitting. It is a genuine VCORE — the spin-first line — scaled down to a 25 inch body for players around nine to ten years old, or 130 to 140 cm tall. Yonex is that specific for a reason: a junior frame one size out is worse than no frame at all.
SPECIFICATIONS
Head size — 100 sq in / 645.16 sq cm
Length — 25 in / 63.5 cm
Strung weight — 225 g / 7.9 oz
String pattern — 16 mains x 18 crosses
Grip size — 4 in (G0)
Composition — graphite with VDM (Vibration Dampening Mesh)
Colour — Ruby Red
Supplied strung
Fits — juniors around 9 to 10 years old, 130 to 140 cm tall
The 8th generation VCORE is built around what Yonex calls the four S's — sweet spot, snapback, speed and stability. At this size that translates into something very practical. The 100 square inch head means mishits still go somewhere useful. The 16×18 pattern is open enough for a child to start finding real topspin rather than being told about it.
At 225 grams strung the frame can be swung through the ball instead of dragged at it, which is the single thing that decides whether a junior develops a stroke or a shove. And VDM in the layup takes the sting out of the frame shots a nine-year-old will hit several times a set.
Beijing is where you take a racquet that is about to grow up. This is a city of ordinary things built at impossible scale: a palace with nine thousand-odd rooms, a temple roofed in blue because blue stands for the sky, a lake with a marble boat moored at the edge of it, and a square of forty hectares. Start small. Aim enormous.
At 225 grams it goes everywhere from a court in a Beijing hutong to a municipal hard court under the Chaoyang towers, and behaves identically on both. It is also perfect for the long flat circuit of the Temple of Heaven park, where half the city is out warming up by seven in the morning and nobody there thinks a child carrying a racquet is worth a second glance.
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