By Oscar Holland
In Beijing, one is rarely far from a ping-pong table. The permanently affixed, heavy-duty playing surfaces are occupied year-round, usually by dexterous octogenarians whose abilities are enough to dissuade mere mortals from ever playing in public.
But in 1935 table tennis was only the 12th most popular athletic activity in the country, sitting below jump rope and only just above home construction in the nation’s hearts. So how did the humble game, invented in England as a drunken after-dinner distraction, rise to the status of national sport?
The reason, according to author and journalist Nicholas Griffin, is British aristocrat and Soviet spy Ivor Montagu. When not producing films with Alfred Hitchcock, fishing with Trotsky or driving around Beverly Hills with Charlie Chaplin shouting Russian swear words at parking valets, the fervent communist dedicated himself to the global proliferation of table tennis.
In Ping-Pong Diplomacy Griffin charts the extraordinary spread of the game throughout China and attributes its success to the ideological inclinations of Montagu, the figure responsible for codifying its rules and founding the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF).
“I think the absolutely key thing for Beijing in the early 1950s was to find a sympathetic international sporting body that was not the International Olympic Committee (IOC),” Griffin explains. “It was pushed out by the West and the same goes for the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA).
“China felt very aggrieved at [its] treatment by those bodies and they wanted somewhere where they’d get a fair go. And since the ITTF was in the hands of a man who happened to be a communist, they thought ping-pong was the way forward.”
The game’s role in the politics of the Cold War would prove monumental. Described by Griffin as a “Trojan dove,” China’ s love affair with table tennis would lead to an official invite for the American national team in 1971, ending a 22-year standoff between the two countries and paving the way for the landmark summit between Mao and Nixon.
Against this backdrop, Ping-Pong Diplomacy presents a compelling and largely untold account of the individuals responsible for the sport’s rise in prominence. Were it not for the actions of Montagu and others, Griffin maintains that the complexion of Beijing would today be profoundly different.
Volleyball and speed skating were also contenders for the nation’s favorite sport in the 1950s, though the author doubts that either could have infiltrated the fabric of the capital in quite the same way. Table tennis was game of proletarian simplicity, accessible to anyone able to carve themselves a paddle and find a flat surface to play upon.
“I think the other remarkable thing which made China focus on table tennis was that the Japanese were having incredible success at that time,” he says. “There was a feeling that anything Japan could do, China could do as well, and soon better.”
And that they did. Montagu offered Beijing the chance to host the 1961 World Table Tennis Championships and the Chinese team swept the medal table, a dominance that continues to this day. The players, some of whom Griffin was able to track down during his research, became instant celebrities.
“I did get to play against one of the ex-world champions,” he recalls. “He was very kind but let’s just say he won handily. Most of my [experience playing] table tennis is that classic European tale of playing a lot between the age of eight and 15 and then never really touching it again.”
The author proves modest in more ways than one. While historians often use modern parallels to bestow relevancy upon their work, Griffin is keen to bat away too meaningful a comparison with Dennis Rodman’s attempts to build bridges through sport.
“If you end up in rehab I’m afraid it’s not really much of a statement of shining diplomacy,” he jokes, referring to the former NBA star's recent post-mission relapse. “But if there’s genuine goodwill, and a willingness to change the status quo in North Korea, then basketball would be a fantastic way to go, because you have two world leaders [Kim and Obama] both known to favor a particular sport. There’s no political will behind it for now, but it could have a fascinating future.
“Since the Berlin Olympics in 1936 there has always this correlation between the health of a nation and sporting events. The real challenge for China now is to compete at sports which are more widely played. They’re doing an amazing job in tennis. Basketball would be the next great statement and then I think football [soccer] is the one lurking on the horizon.”
Until then, Beijing will remain a city of the ball and bat. The rebellious British aristocrat responsible for the phenomenon made little record of his trips across the bamboo curtain but his indelible mark on the capital lives on.
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