WANG ZHIZHI, THE newest Dallas Maverick, is more than the first Chinese player to join America's premier professional basketball circuit. Whether he likes it or not, the towering Wang is also a potential goodwill ambassador who, with luck and talent, may help hold together a frayed relationship that got its public start three decades ago through sport.
Thirty years ago today, an American table tennis team crossed the border at Lowu en route to no one knew quite what in Beijing - other than the certainty of embarrassing losses at their chosen sport.
Although they didn't know it, the nine players and their entourage - including, not by accident, 10 journalists - had been invited by Mao Zedong himself to make this deliberately conspicuous tour. The result was ping-pong diplomacy.
It had begun in Nagoya, Japan, just days earlier at the 31st table tennis world championships. After shunning foreign competition during the Cultural Revolution, China's sports federation had asked Premier Zhou Enlai for permission to send its skilled team to Japan. He wrote to Chairman Mao, who said yes, and the 64-member delegation was on its way.
The politically coached players refused to meet teams representing the 'illegitimate' regimes of South Vietnam and Cambodia (King Sihanouk was then a political exile in China).
But they sought out the United States players, and soon were exchanging small gifts with them. When the young Americans said they would like to visit China, the die was cast. Chinese officials beseeched Beijing for permission to issue an invitation, and Mao himself gave approval.