Ping Pong Diplomacy

Ping Pong Diplomacy is a work of historical fiction based on the so-called ?ping pong diplomacy? of 1971 and 1972 between the United States and China. At the World table tennis championships in Nagoya, Japan in 1971, the Chinese delegation invited the American team to play several exhibition matches in China as a first move in an effort to open diplomatic relations between the two countries that had been broken off after the Chinese Communists expelled Chiang Kaishek to Taiwan. The United States invited the Chinese team back the following year. All of the characters, as well as the story, are fictional. The setting takes place in the rec room of Nick Bedford at the present time. Bedford was one of the Americans on the US national table tennis team, and he recalls his story through a series of flashbacks.