Where it all started: a bus pulling up at the door

April 4, 1971. Nagoya, Japan. The 31st World Table Tennis Championships.

Glenn Cowan, the 19-year-old college student who was the No. 3 player on the US men’s team, finished practice and walked out of the training hall — to find that his ride was gone. Just as he was panicking, a large bus with the Championships logo pulled up. He waved it down frantically, and stepped aboard.

Once seated, Cowan looked around and felt his stomach drop — the bus was full of Chinese people.

These were years with almost no person-to-person contact between China and the United States. The Chinese players and staff on the bus recognized him too: the young American with shoulder-length hair and flower-print bell-bottoms.

After a brief, awkward silence, Zhuang Zedong stood up from the back row.

A Hangzhou brocade

Zhuang walked over to Cowan and started talking through an interpreter. The Chinese and American people had always been friendly, he said; we’re all glad you’re on our bus today. Then he pulled a Chinese craft out of his shoulder bag — a Hangzhou brocade woven with a scene of the Yellow Mountains — and gave it to Cowan.

Cowan was stunned by the gift, and embarrassed: he rummaged through his own bag and couldn’t even find a comb. “But I have to give you something back.”

When the bus reached the arena, the two got off together, laughing and talking. Japanese reporters waiting at the door caught the moment. The next day, their photo ran on front pages across Japan — under headlines dripping with astonishment: Are Zhuang Zedong and Cowan friends?

A few days later, Cowan bought a red-white-and-blue T-shirt printed with a peace symbol from a shop near the subway, and gave it to Zhuang in return.

That was how the world’s cameras found these two young men.

A decision that demanded caution

The friendly contact between Chinese and American players led the US team to request a visit to China.

Nobody involved treated the weight of this lightly. It should be said plainly that the Chinese government’s position was clear and consistent: there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory. The Chinese government firmly opposes any form of “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan.” The US Table Tennis Association at that time insisted on a “two Chinas” policy, and had recently supported Taiwan’s participation in the ITTF under the name “Republic of China” — a real obstacle between the two sides that had to be faced.

Accordingly, the initial report from the Foreign Ministry and the State Sports Commission concluded that “the time is not yet ripe.” Zhou Enlai annotated the report and passed it up to Mao Zedong for decision.

The turning point came between the night of April 6 and the early hours of April 7. Weighing the international situation, Mao concluded that the United States genuinely wanted reconciliation with China, and that the American team’s request to visit was a rare opportunity. He made the final call: invite the US table tennis team to China.

On the morning of April 7, the Chinese side formally conveyed the invitation.

Nagoya erupted when the news broke. The AP dispatch from Tokyo that day read: “The most significant step in 20 years toward restoring the broken dialogue between the United States and China has come in an unexpected place — a table tennis arena.”

Questions in the Great Hall of the People

On April 10, 1971, the American table tennis delegation arrived in Beijing — the first American sports delegation to visit since the founding of the People’s Republic.

On April 14, Zhou Enlai met the delegations from the United States, Canada, Colombia and other countries in the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People. Midway through, Cowan suddenly stood up and asked: “Mr. Premier, what is your opinion of hippies in America?”

Not a question on any script. Zhou looked at his shaggy hair and said: “It seems you’re a hippie yourself.” Then he spoke — young people everywhere were dissatisfied with the status quo and searching for truth; all kinds of things emerge while thought is changing, and that is tolerable; when we were young, we too tried every kind of path in search of truth.

Cowan had braced for a lecture and got understanding instead. Nearly every major paper in the world reported the meeting. Cowan’s mother later sent a bouquet of deep crimson roses from America to Beijing, thanking Zhou for how he had spoken to her son.

Zhou said one sentence at that meeting, quoted ever since:

“Your visit has opened the gate for friendly exchanges between our two peoples.”

The big ball after the little ball

A small silver ball really did move the thing that followed.

In July 1971, US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger made a secret visit to Beijing; in the same period, China restored its lawful seat at the United Nations. In February 1972, President Nixon visited China. A new page in US–China relations had been turned.

In 1971, 1972 and 1973, Beijing hosted the Afro-Asian Table Tennis Invitational, the Asian Table Tennis Championships, and the Afro-Asian-Latin American Table Tennis Invitational — the last of them drawing teams from as many as 86 countries and regions.

Zhou Enlai later put it in a strikingly poetic way:

“On April 7, our great leader Chairman Mao flicked the ping-pong ball back across the net — and it set the world in motion. The little ball moved the big ball, the globe itself.”

And the process that changed the world began with one man boarding the wrong bus.

What this story really weighs

“Ping-pong diplomacy” gets retold not just because it bent the course of history, but because it demonstrates something plain:

In the face of grand confrontation, the first thing to give way is usually the most natural goodwill between ordinary people.

The Hangzhou brocade Zhuang Zedong handed over could have been called superfluous in the political language of the day — even risky. But it was exactly that uncalculated gesture that gave two long-sealed countries a first place to land.

The player who handed over the gift: Zhuang Zedong. For table tennis’s longer road in China, see A brief history of the national game. After that Nagoya edition, Japanese table tennis slid into a long decline — see The Japanese era.