What the young athlete did not fully realize at the time was that history was unfolding, and she was part of it. US president Richard Nixon would visit China in February 1972, followed two months later by a reciprocal tour of the US by a Chinese table tennis team.

The groundbreaking events, known as ping-pong diplomacy, are even referenced in the 1994 hit Hollywood movie Forrest Gump, in which the lead character develops an aptitude for the sport and joins the US Army team before eventually competing against Chinese athletes on a goodwill tour.

The catalyst for the historic events of 1972 was a dramatic meeting between flamboyant US player Glenn Cowan and Chinese competitor and three-time world champion Zhuang Zedong.

In Nagoya one afternoon, Cowan was practicing with a Chinese player when he realized he was too late to catch his team's bus. Instead, he took the Chinese team's bus. Zhuang rose from his seat at the back to greet Cowan and presented him with a silk-screen portrait of the Huangshan mountain range in Anhui province.

Later, when Cowan and Zhuang got off the bus, they found themselves in the media spotlight. Asked by a journalist whether he wanted to go to China, Cowan replied, "Of course!"