When was ping pong first played in China?

Answer 1

They started playing from early 1970s.

later this month Table Tennis will emerge from the margins of Western hip culture to take centre-stage at the greatest show on earth. In China, ping pong is neither an urban recreation nor an ironic diversion, but a facet of national identity. It was adored by Chairman Mao and revered by Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping. Tables perch in metropolitan railway stations and on the dusty streets of the rural hinterland, so that commuters and farmhands can indulge their obsession. Table tennis in China is both proletarian and bourgeois, elitist and egalitarian. The kerplock-plock of ball on bat is the rhythm that unites the nation. Its history is China's history. Think cricket, football, Dickens and The Beatles - then add them together - and you will get some way to understanding the centrality of ping pong to modern Chinese consciousness.

Even Richard Nixon, that wily political animal, was astonished at how effectively the sport facilitated rapprochement between the US and China, perhaps the most seminal political realignment of the second half of the 20th century. It was sparked when Glenn Cowan, an American table tennis-playing hippy, befriended Zhuang Zedong, the legendary Chinese player, at the World Championships in Nagoya in 1971. Photos of their handshake were published in the Japanese press, emboldening Mao to issue an invitation for the US team to visit China. The seismic buzz surrounding the visit - Nixon called it "the week that shook the world" - created the political climate for the US President to visit ten months later. Mao was said to have loved the soubriquet that attached to the episode: "ping pong diplomacy".

Answer 2

The Ping Pong game was started in England.