history
At the 1971 World Championships in Nagoya, Zhuang struck up a friendly gesture with American player Glenn Cowan on a bus - the moment widely credited as opening the door to Nixon's 1972 visit to China, better known in English as Ping-Pong Diplomacy.
culture
He later rose politically during the Cultural Revolution, became head of the State Sports Commission, and was briefly imprisoned after the fall of the Gang of Four - a reminder of how tightly elite sport and high politics were entwined in Mao's China.
