|
|
|
China-U.S. Table Tennis Legacy to Be Renewed
From ESPN.com: Olympics
Thursday, March 13, 2008
'Diplomacy' reprise to be held at Nixon Library
By Jay Weiner
Special to ESPN.com
In April 1971, politics and sports -- often considered a devil's brew -- mixed big-time.
Amid the Cold War and the Vietnam War, the game Americans call "ping-pong" made diplomatic history. Then, over a 5-by-9-foot table, with tiny paddles and plastic balls, the People's Republic of China and United States communicated for the first time since 1949 when a group of seven Americans went to the long-isolated country.
With table tennis as the gateway, President Richard Nixon soon after visited China. He met with Communist leader Mao Zedong in the then-primitive city called Peking.
Now, the 2008 Summer Olympic Games -- China's economic and political coming-out party -- are less than five months away in that same metropolis, now booming and known as Beijing.
And now, ESPN.com has learned, a reprise of "ping-pong diplomacy" is being planned for early June at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Calif.
"Ping-pong diplomacy, the rematch," is what Sandy Quinn, the assistant director of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, is calling it. "Ping-pong diplomacy and [Nixon's] visit paved the way for great relations and for China to step into the world ... Maybe, one of the outgrowths of all that is the Olympics in Beijing. So, as a prelude to that, one natural thing we could do is ping-pong."
The dates are not yet firm, said U.S. Table Tennis Association technical director Doru Gheorghe, who visited the Nixon Library on Monday. He and Quinn are waiting for confirmation from Chinese table tennis leaders. It's been determined that three players from the U.S. and three from China -- including, perhaps, some who met in 1971 -- will compete as a part of a three-day festival that will include instructional workshops for children.
The venue -- either the parking lot at the Nixon Library, or inside, in an exact replica of the White House's East Room.
Table tennis has long been China's national sport; Chinese players won every title at last month's World Championships. Training centers abound across the nation. Table tennis players are national celebrities, like NFL or NBA stars in the United States.
By late 1970, Nixon had been sending diplomatic signals to the Chinese that he wanted to warm relations that chilled after Mao's revolution. With the U.S. team in Nagoya, Japan, for the World Championships in April 1971, China's premier Zhou Enlai took the next step. He invited four U.S. men and three women to play in China.
Judy Hoarfrost, now 52, was 15 at the time, the youngest member of the U.S. team. She was 10th-grader Judy Bochenski then.
"I don't think any of us knew the full extent of what it would become," Hoarfrost told ESPN.com on Thursday from her Portland, Ore., home. "We didn't know that it would catch the media's fancy and it would become this big media machine. But we all knew we would be the first American group in China after so many years. We knew that was significant."
Nixon, his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Zhou and Mao had been communicating behind the scenes. But ping-pong pushed the agenda.
"I think we were just in the right place at the right time,'' Hoarfrost said. "If it hadn't been ping-pong diplomacy, it would have been something else. They were going to make it happen, but I was really thrilled to be a part of it."
The rematch idea grew out of discussions between Nixon Library officials and Chinese leaders last month. Gheorge and USTTA interim executive director Mike Cavanaugh were brought in to nail down sporting details.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, Hoarfrost was among three Americans invited to Hui'an, China, the birthplace of Zhou Enlai, to celebrate his 110th birthday. A generation later, she remains an honored guest in China. "We're always treated like royalty,'' she said.
Beijing's Olympics, of course, are dipped in politics, from China's role in war-torn Darfur, to domestic human-rights policies. But Hoarfrost, speaking from experience, says she believes table tennis can continue to play a positive political role.
"The message we get from ping-pong diplomacy is that people want to connect with others,'' she said. "It was a whimsical, serendipitous kind of event to happen to me. But the globe is getting smaller. We have environmental issues. We have peace issues. We have the potential to blow the world up with nuclear weapons, so we have to have good relations with other countries ... Sports can make politics be better."
With that in mind, the China-U.S. table tennis legacy is about to be renewed.
Jay Weiner is a sports journalist based in St. Paul, Minn. He can be reached at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
.
Copyright ©2008 ESPN Internet Ventures.
|
|
|
|
