Remembering ping-pong diplomacy 45 years after Chinese team's US tour

Younger world ping-pong champion Ding Ning is deeply touched by the old generation of the Chinese and US players. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Chinese delegation also visited the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library on the university's Ann Arbor campus, where they had a chance to read the archives about the meeting between China's late Chairman Mao Zedong and then US President Gerald Ford.

The official interpreter for the high-level Sino-American talks, Tang Wensheng, who was former vice-chairperson of the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation that sponsored the ping-pong players' current visit, explained to them the delicacy of relations between China, the former Soviet Union and the US during the Cold War.

In the Ford Presidential Library, the disclassified minutes from the White House brought her back to the 1970s.

Madame Tang was personally involved in the ping-pong diplomacy from 1971. She knows what's behind the doors and how the leaders pushed the normalization of the relations between the two countries, which significantly changed the world.

Jan Berris, now the vice-president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, was one of the those who escorted the first Chinese ping-pong delegation 45 years ago.

She told Xinhua that during the trip, the American journalists and the ordinary people constantly asked Chinese ping-pong players, "what is about the US that surprised you most? What did you find here that you didn't expect?"

"I would hear their response－We are really surprised about how warm and welcoming the American people are," said Berris, but adding she first thought it must be what they were told to reply.

But at the end of the 18-day tour, she believed that the Chinese players were right.

"It was really a wonderful experience and the best people-to-people diplomacy that was supposed to do," she said.