Little dabs of soft power can help unravel cultural rivalry

In April 1971, a time when the Cold War seemed frozen in place and showed no signs of ever thawing, someone came up with a brilliant idea. After an international table-tennis tournament in Nagoya, Japan, the People's Republic of China invited the United States national team to play the Chinese team on the Chinese mainland.

It was a stunning turn of events, an early spring harbinger of a possible thaw in the Cold War.

The US team accepted the invitation and traveled with a group of journalists to China, arriving on April 10.