The Chinese-style bat
The three previous profiles share a European logic: tensor rubbers on all-wood or composite blades, where the sponge does the heavy work of restitution. The Chinese-style bat starts from a different premise. Here the surface rules. The tacky topsheet — described in 5.3 — grips the ball with a friction no tensor matches, and the hard sponge stores energy that is only released when the arm supplies real force. The result is a bat that rewards technique more than any other combination and that, executed well, produces a loop with a spin and an arc that the European style achieves by other means.
The reference rubber is DHS's Hurricane 3, in its various commercial and selected versions. The sponge is hard — around 40° on the DHS scale, which does not translate directly to the European scale, as explained in 4.3 — and the topsheet is dense, tacky and heavy. Untreated, the combination is demanding: the sponge barely yields on moderate strokes, the catapult effect described in 2.4 requires a forceful impact, and the ball falls short if the arm does not commit. That is why boosting is an integral part of the design, not an optional extra. Section 11.6 explained how a boost lowers the effective hardness of the sponge and opens the response window; chapter 14 develops the practice in detail. Here it is enough to note that mounting a Hurricane without boost on a stiff blade produces a different bat — harder, slower, less progressive — from the one the design anticipates.
The blade admits two philosophies. The first is outer carbon: composite in the outer plies — covered in 10.3 — contributing stiffness and directness. On that stiff base the hard sponge of the Chinese rubber compresses efficiently and the response is direct, almost immediate. The player feels the ball little but gains speed and weight of shot on the power stroke. Models such as the Viscaria, or outer-carbon blades from Chinese brands, are common choices along these lines. The second philosophy is the all-wood seven-ply described in 9.5: heavier than a five-ply, stiffer than most all-wood blades, but with a vibration that composite does not transmit. The player gains tactile information in exchange for a notch less outright speed. Both options work; the choice depends on whether the player prioritises raw power or sensory feedback.
The asymmetry between sides takes a form of its own here. The traditional Chinese pattern mounted tacky rubber on both faces, but the modern tendency — above all among players using the reverse backhand in penhold, or playing shakehand with an active backhand — is to combine a Hurricane on the forehand with a European or Japanese tensor on the backhand. The reason is mechanical: the kinetic chain of the backhand, being shorter, does not generate the force the Chinese rubber needs in order to engage. A medium or soft tensor on that side offers a response with less effort, and the shared blade arbitrates the compromise. It is the moderate asymmetry described in 11.4, taken to its most visible expression.
The assembled weight is the critical point. The Hurricane is a heavy rubber — the dense topsheet and the high-density sponge add up to more than an equivalent tensor — and the boost adds between two and five grams. On a seven-ply or a robust outer carbon, the assembly comfortably passes 190 grams and can approach 200. The resulting swingweight penalises quick transitions and accumulates fatigue, as argued in 11.5. It is no accident that elite Chinese players train with a physical intensity that sustains that weight; a club player who copies the combination without the corresponding physical preparation usually discovers that the arm does not hold up to what the spec sheet promises.
This profile is not a “harder” version of the attacking bat described in 12.3. It is a different playing philosophy: the Chinese rubber generates spin through friction of the topsheet, not through elastic deformation of the sponge. That changes the arc of the ball, the feel in the hand and the stroke technique required. Section 5.4 developed the differences between the two traditions. What matters here is that the combination is designed as a closed system — rubber, blade, boost and stroke technique all need one another — and that removing one component without adjusting the rest produces an incoherent result.