Located at the southeast corner of the world-famous Peking University, the Peking University Gymnasium, venue for table tennis competition of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, is a rectangle building and looks nothing special. However, as its chief designer Tang Shuoning described, the peculiarity of the building lies in two curved ridges on its metal roof. In the center of the roof and between the two ridges there is a transparent sphere. Looking at the front of the gym, one will see that the top lines of the building resemble very much the roof of an ancient Chinese palace. For its unique shape Tang Shuoning and his colleagues gave it a name with profound connotations - "China Ridge". They meant to use the design, the ridges and the glass sphere on the roof, to symbolize the style of traditional Chinese buildings as well as the curve created by table tennis players in playing the game.

According to Mo Yuanbin, head of the university's construction project department, experts from the BOCOG have once commented that the Peking University Gymnasium is using more new technologies than any other venues built for the Beijing Games. The new technologies include those applied in the geothermal heat pump system for heating and cooling, the rainwater drainage system on the roof, the non-lead lighting products and the intelligent lighting control system for Olympic broadcasting, which in a way help contribute to Beijing's delivering of a high-tech and green Olympic Games.

Tang Shuoning, who is also vice president of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University, also revealed that they plan to erect a champions' wall inside the Olympic table tennis gym, on which all the Olympic table tennis champions will be invited to leave their handprints.