Word: ping-pong
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...International Table Tennis Federation was, in 1953, one of the first sports organizations to drop ties with Taiwan in favor of the mainland. In 1959, Rong Guotuan made history as China's first world champion in any sport. Mao deemed the victory a "spiritual nuclear weapon." Determined to maintain Ping-Pong supremacy, coaches fanned out across the countryside looking for kindergartners with quick reflexes and superior hand-eye coordination. "Other countries have produced some really good table-tennis players," says Liu Fengyan, director of China's table-tennis administrative center. "But without a sports system like China's, their success...
This single-minded drive explains why China has full-time academies dedicated to what most countries consider a rec-room pastime. At the Luneng Table-Tennis School in Shandong province, 230 boarding students crowd a gymnasium set up with 80 Ping-Pong tables. In the morning, children train for about four hours. A few hours of academic classes are held in the afternoon, more than at many other sports schools. Three times a week, students hone their table-tennis skills also in the evening. Many kids see their parents for only a couple of weeks each year. "China...
...meticulously scripted itinerary calls for Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to play host as Hu strolls through Yokohama's Chinatown, visits temples in Nara and dines at the Imperial Palace. On May 8 at Waseda University in Tokyo, Fukuda's alma mater, the two leaders are scheduled to play Ping-Pong...
...going to stay in office much longer." Says Phil Deans, an international-affairs expert and assistant dean at Temple University in Tokyo: "The more ordinary, normal and boring the Sino-Japanese relationship is, the better it is for everybody." When Fukuda takes on Hu at Ping-Pong, his shot selection had better be perfect...
...concert Tuesday night in Pyongyang, before 1,400 North Koreans, the orchestra played An American in Paris, part of an artistic adventure that has whipped up excitement not just in musical circles but in diplomatic ones. When the Philharmonic's visit was announced, images of the Ping-Pong diplomacy of an earlier era were revived. In 1971 the visit to Beijing by a group of U.S. table tennis players foreshadowed the end of China's Cold War-era seclusion and a new era in relations between Washington and Beijing. Now, the Philharmonic's concert comes as Pyongyang shuts down...