From ping-pong to pickleball, friendship wins

On the wall of Jack Howard's modest bedroom hung a framed photograph he treasured above all others. Taken in April 1971, it captured Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai standing with the visiting US table tennis delegation in Beijing. Howard, then captain and coach of the American team, stood quietly in the upper right corner.

Above the image was a simple dedication:

"In Recognition of Your Participation in the USA Ping-Pong Diplomacy Mission to China in April 1971."

Nearly half a century later, that photograph remained more than a keepsake. It was a reminder that a small white ball had helped open one of the most consequential chapters in modern China-US relations.

"I have never regretted being a table tennis player ever," Howard told Peter Gao, president of the American Chinese Athlete Association, or ACAA, during a visit to his Las Vegas, Nevada home in March 2019.

"When I was in my 20s, I was good at a lot of sports," Howard recalled. "There was no money, very little money, and no glory. But that was my choice, and I want to tell you I am glad I made it."

At the time, Howard could never have imagined that his decision would one day place him inside a diplomatic breakthrough.

As captain and coach of the US delegation at the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan, in 1971, Howard led the American team after it received an unexpected invitation from China. The invitation followed a widely remembered encounter between US player Glenn Cowan and Chinese champion Zhuang Zedong during the championships, when Zhuang approached Cowan on a team bus and offered him a gift. USA Table Tennis says photographs of their interaction quickly became symbols of goodwill between two countries then separated by deep political tensions.

On April 10, the US team crossed into China. The visit came after more than two decades of estrangement between the two countries and soon became known as Ping-Pong Diplomacy. During a reception in Beijing on April 14, Zhou told members of the American team that their visit had "opened a new page" in relations between the Chinese and American peoples, according to historical records maintained by the US State Department.

"It was a whole new start for diplomacy between the United States and China," Howard later recalled.

The US State Department's Office of the Historian describes Ping-Pong Diplomacy as giving a public face to the broader rapprochement that preceded President Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972.