Los Angeles—A friendship match between American and Chinese table tennis players today at UCLA built momentum for the 2019 Ping Pong Fit International Festival scheduled on August 31 and September 1 in Long Beach.
The match, organized by USA Table Tennis (USATT) and Global Creative Cities Coalition (GC3), draw a couple of hundred of local ping pong fans to UCLA John Wooden Center, who were thrilled by the world-class performance.
Today’s match was between Chinese women team represented by Ding Ning, Liu Shiwen, Wang Manyu, Sun Yingsha, Chen Meng and Zhu Yuling, and American men team represented by Jishan Liang, Nick Tio, Nikhil Kumar, Xin Zhou and Victor Liu.
Players of China national table tennis team, at the invitation of USATT, is conducting 3-week-long training at UCLA, the first time for Team China to have such a training in America.
Michael Levine, the interim executive vice chancellor of UCLA, once again welcomed the Chinese table tennis players to the university to have their trainings and bring spectacular games to the American audience.
Table tennis, a popular sport in China, played a role 48 years ago in boosting the people-to-people exchanges between the United States and China, which was later referred as “Ping Pong Diplomacy”.
Table tennis made a special contribution to the athletic exchanges between China and the U.S. And Ping Pong Diplomacy played a unique role in the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, said Shi Yuanqiang, deputy consul general of the Chinese Consulate General in Los Angeles.
The goal of the upcoming Ping Pong Fit International Festival is to promote table tennis. The City of Long Beach is poised to become the first table tennis friendly city in the United States.
“I am pleased to see the deepened people-to-people exchanges between the U.S. and China,” said Monique Luo, the founder of GC3. “We look forward to bringing healthier and happier life style to more people, and making our cities better places to live through the vitality and energy associated with table tennis.”
According Barry Sedlik, the co-founder of GC3, the festival will be held in Long Beach Convention Center over the Labor Day weekend concurrently with the 9th Annual 2019 LA Open Table Tennis Tournament Championship. In addition to Ping Pong, there will be demonstrations of Chinese intangible cultural heritage and folk arts.
