In April 1971, a group of ping pong players from the United States paid an eight-day visit to China, the first American delegation to set foot in the People’s Republic of China. It was an opening gambit in the restoration of Sino-US relations after a frozen 22 years.
Shanghai is hosting activities to commemorate the historic event that came to be known as “ping pong diplomacy.” A friendly table tennis competition was held on April 10, a historical exhibition is underway, and a special seminar will be held on Friday.
Several Chinese and American witnesses to the 1971 event shared their memories with Shanghai Daily.
The wrong bus, the right move
Xu Yinsheng, 83, then coach of the Chinese team, still clearly remembers how Glenn Cowan, a US player who was competing in the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya in 1971, mistakenly boarded a shuttle bus carrying the Chinese national team in the Japanese city.
“We were sitting in the bus and waiting for it to set off,” he said. “Suddenly, Cowan got on, with his long hair and hippie-style clothes.”
He added, “Chinese table tennis players had met American players in many competitions, where we played against each other, shook hands and even took photos with one another as part of regular manners. So when Cowan got on, there was no hostility from us. None of us told him that he was on the wrong bus and should go off.”
Then Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai would have been proud. Before the team had departed for Nagoya, he had met the players and told them the sport was not merely to compete for prizes but also to promote exchanges among peoples around the world.
Zhou initiated the slogan “Friendship First, Competition Second” for the first time during that encounter.
On the bus, there was a language barrier. Most of the Chinese, including Xu, just sat there, but world champion Zhuang Zedong, who had an outgoing personality, stepped forward to say hello to Cowan and even presented him with a silk screen picture of the Yellow Mountain in China.
“Of course, most of their communication was in body language,” said Xu.
When the bus stopped at the Aichi stadium, it was surrounded by dozens of reporters because China was a strong contender and had been absent from the World Table Tennis Championships twice before the Nagoya event.
When they saw an American player chatting with a Chinese player, they recorded their surprise in photographs that hit the headlines the next day.
Read More at https://www.shine.cn/news/in-focus/2104298209/
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