Focus on change

Cameras, as key reminders of the part of history, have captured the vast changes in both countries over the past 55 years, according to players from both countries who participated in the matches.

Zheng Minzhi, a Chinese women's team member, showed a camera sent to her as a gift from US friends during her trip to the country in 1972. "They wanted us to capture our wonderful time in the US through the lens. I've treasured this camera ever since," she said.

Zheng said she still remembers the charter flight that took them to Detroit was called the "Friendship Clipper".

"The flight attendants all spoke Chinese," she said. "Such great hospitality filled me with curiosity and anticipation for the trip to the US."

She noted that when they put on an exhibition match at an auto plant, the workers enthusiastically shook their hands and kept saying, "Welcome, welcome!"

Zheng keeps the camera in a prominent place on a bookshelf in her home.

"I believe this bond will never be cut," she said. "I will pass this camera down to my son and my granddaughter, so they will understand its value and carry the friendship between China and the US from generation to generation," she added.

Of the recent reunion with the US players including Sweeris and Hoarfrost, Zheng said, "everyone was so thrilled" as their friendship is precious and has endured 55 years.

"We hadn't seen each other for at least 10 years. The last time they were here was before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic," she said.

On the cover of the April 26, 1971, edition of Time Magazine, a color photo showed the US delegation at the Badaling section of the Great Wall in Beijing. The members were photographed leaning on the wall and smiling.

The photo was attributed to Norman Webster from the Toronto Globe & Mail and the upper-right hand of the magazine cover read "First Color Photos — Yanks in Peking". The subhead beneath the "TIME" logo said "China: A Whole New Game".

Recalling the cover photo, Sweeris said: "Well, we had cameras but they were not very good ones, and color pictures (at that time) had just come out."

During their recent stay in Beijing, Hoarfrost, Sweeris and another former US women's team member Olga Soltesz returned to the Great Wall.

"It's nostalgic to be back here with the three of us (female US players) who were originally on this wall in 1971 … The team is here. We're all healthy and alive," Sweeris said.

Noting that this time she could hear her heart pumping at the Great Wall, she said, "I was only 23 back then, so it was a lot easier."

Hoarfrost said of their 1971 visit to the wall: "There were no people when we were there, and all the way to the Great Wall was rural. It was just a bumpy rural drive. It was not like now — there are all the cars and traffic and everything."

"There's a McDonald's here (at the parking lot of the Badaling Great Wall)! There was no McDonald's in 1971. And everything is so modern. Here we are taking photos with cellphones. We had no cellphones then," she added.