Fifty-five years after a groundbreaking people-to-people exchange that altered the course of China-US relations, key witnesses from both nations gathered in Shanghai on April 13 to celebrate the anniversary of the iconic China-US Ping-Pong Diplomacy. Hosted at Shanghai University of Sport, the opening of the Shanghai leg of the anniversary event featured an official welcome ceremony followed by friendly exhibition table tennis matches, reviving the spirit of the historic 1971 exchange.
Shanghai holds a special place in the legacy of Ping-Pong Diplomacy. When the US table tennis team made their landmark trip to China in 1971 — the first group of American athletes to visit the country in decades — Shanghai served as one of the most memorable stops on their itinerary. The team competed in friendly matches at Jiangwan Stadium, and was greeted by warm, enthusiastic crowds on the city’s streets, laying the early groundwork for the eventual normalization of relations between the two countries through people-to-people connection.
This year’s gathering brought surviving original witnesses from both sides back to the city where they once helped make history. Among the American attendees were Judy Louise Hoarfrost, Jan Carol Berris, Connie Mae Sweeris and her husband Dell Arthur Sweeris, who joined Chinese table tennis veterans Yao Zhenxu and Xu Yinsheng, alongside a contemporary US table tennis delegation. Over the course of the event, participants shared personal anecdotes from the 1971 visit, reflecting on how the small, informal exchange of the 1970s grew into a 55-year tapestry of cultural and people-to-people ties between China and the United States.
For Hoarfrost, who was just 15 years old and the youngest member of the 1971 American team, the 1971 trip left an unerasable mark on her life, with Shanghai holding a particularly lasting impression. Now on her 10th visit to China, she noted that the city has undergone dramatic, transformative change over the past five and a half decades — but the warm hospitality that the Chinese people showed her in 1971 remains just as heartfelt and unchanged today.