Just months before American Ping-Pong players touched down in Beijing, Montagu released his autobiography. The Youngest Son was evasive and covered only the first twenty-three years of his life. The reviews were mixed. “Few men have achieved anything by the age of twenty-three to justify putting their life story on paper,” huffed the Times Literary Supplement, “and Mr. Ivor Montagu is no exception.” Even the most perceptive review, by former Communist Philip Toynbee, dismissed Montagu as “deeply naïve” in writing that he’d been incapable of “convincingly maintaining deceit.” Toynbee remembered that in his own time as a Communist he had “told more lies, and with more relish, in three years than I have told, or relished for the rest of my life.”
Montagu’s book sold well enough for his publisher to ask him to produce a second volume. It was rejected for the simple reason that Montagu didn’t write a new book; he rewrote the old one. Who would write about the same twenty-three years twice? Only a man who was still trying to sort out his own story. He omitted World War II, the rise of the Cold War, his trips to China, and many of his Moscow visits. Yet in that rejected handwritten memoir, he included the revelation that he had been ordered back to Moscow by the Comintern. Was Montagu, now entering his seventies, edging toward the full truth or merely confessing to the life of a propagandist to blur his role as a spy?
In his final years, he would step forward every now and then to speak about Russia or China, giving rapturous summations of Mao’s legacy in the wake of the Chairman’s death. When the Chinese table tennis team toured England in January 1972, Montagu awaited them as they took tea at 10 Downing Street with the prime minister. He took the squad to London Zoo to introduce them to Chi Chi the panda. Mostly though, he was true to his Who’s Who entry, where he claimed his hobbies were “washing up, pottering about, sleeping through television.”
To his great-niece, Nicole Montagu, perhaps the only one of his relatives to track him down after the family split, he was a warm, kind character, always dressed in “a green cardigan with slightly tufty hair.” He’d lead her to his study, where they’d sit for hours over mugs of tea. She may have reminded Montagu of his younger self as she “tried to understand why there were so many injustices in the world.” She remembered him as patient and gentle even when she started to make choices that contradicted his own views. In 1984, while she was working in drug rehabilitation in the slums of Hong Kong, Ivor’s wife, Hell, died. Ivor followed her two weeks later, passing away on November 5, Guy Fawkes’ Day, when England lights up with bonfires and fireworks.
There was a handful of obituaries. Like the best of spies, Montagu had receded quietly into the shadows. Only five thousand miles away was his value recognized. “The Chinese people will never forget Ivor Montagu,” said an official in Beijing.
Glenn Cowan and Zhuang Zedong were the casualties of his ideas. Montagu built Ping-Pong for the state, not the individual. The Chinese grasped that and were willing for their athletes to pay the price. Cowan unwittingly bet on table tennis and failed.
And what of Montagu’s greatest gift to China, the game itself? If you’re young and Chinese, you’re wearing a Houston Rockets shirt and bouncing a basketball on Beijing asphalt or you’re in a Manchester United uniform, sprinting after a dusty ball and dreaming of a green field. Your dad plays table tennis. The numbers still amaze—300 million play the game—but the shine is off.
For a sport to be effective, even politically, it needs at least the perception of drama. The Chinese tried everything to make the international competition in table tennis more equitable. They benched their A team and still dominated tournaments. They sent coaches abroad to try to raise the level of play. Yet they still win.
Once upon a time, table tennis was the only option, the very first foothold on China’s journey to international respect. Nowadays it’s a living fossil like the horseshoe crab; both were formed in volatile eras. Other sports have evolved in China over the decades. A richer country has a boundless horizon to explore, but table tennis remains the nation’s one perfect specimen.
Ivor Montagu’s father, the second Lord Swaythling.
Ivor Montagu’s mother, Lady Swaythling.
Ivor Montagu, early childhood.
Ivor Montagu as a teenager.
The Cambridge University team of 1926. Ivor Montagu is in the back row at far right.
A publicity card from Richard Bergmann, world champion, night porter, soldier (1940s).
Ogimura grasps the Cup after his victory in London at the 1954 Championships.
Rong Guotuan, winner of the 1959 men’s title, in Dortmund, Germany.
Propaganda photo from Hebei Province showing the supposed benefits of Lysenko’s close planting (1958).
Ivor Montagu (right) accepts the Lenin Peace Prize at the Kremlin (1959).
Left to right, Ivor Montagu, Zhou Enlai, and He Long finishing dinner with a cake made up of Ping-Pong paddles (April 1961).
Ivor Montagu in the middle of the rostrum. To his left is Zhou Enlai; to his right, Deng Xiaoping, with He Long in sunglasses farther down the row (April 1961).
Ivor Montagu hands over the Swaythling Cup. Second from bottom is Li Furong, then Zhuang Zedong, and above him, Rong Guotuan (April 1961).
Ivor Montagu smiles as the Chinese team accepts their silverware. Zhuang Zedong is on the highest podium, Li Furong beside him (April 1961).
Red Guards hold aloft copies of Mao’s Little Red Book in Beijing (April 21, 1967).
Ivor Montagu holding hands with Zhou Enlai. He Long shares the joke.
Ogimura (left) and Zhuang Zedong—a rare photograph of the two men’s champions together (ca. 1962).
The China Watcher, William J. Cunningham (left), shakes the hand of American ambassador to Japan Armin Meyer.
Glenn Cowan surrounded by a crowd in Beijing (April 1971).
The American team tours the Great Wall. George Brathwaite stands back right. Next to him is Graham Steenhoven. Seated at left is Glenn Cowan. Behind him is John Tannehill; beside Tannehill is Judy Bochenski (April 1971).
Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing (July 1971).
The American press awaits the arrival of the Chinese team (April 1972).
Zhuang Zedong grasps Glenn Cowan’s hand as he steps off the plane (April 1972).
Zhuang Zedong introduces President Nixon to the team in the Rose Garden (April 1972).
Zhuang Zedong gives a speech at the UN (April 1972).
The Chinese team visits Marineland in California (April 1972).
Richard Nixon sandwiched by Zhou Enlai and Jiang Qing during the president’s 1972 visit to China.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, thanks to those who granted me interviews. The book relies heavily on the memories of the men and women who traveled to Beijing in 1961 and 1971.
I am even more indebted to the Chinese players, coaches, and officials who lived through the extremes of that decade and chose to talk with me. In Beijing and Shanghai, thanks to Qiu Zhonghui, Xi Enting, Liang Geliang, Han Zhicheng, Liang Youneng, Li Furong, Shen Ji Chang, and Wang Ding Hua. Thanks to Xu Shaofa, Xu Yinsheng, Yao Zhenxu, Zeng Chuan Qiang, Zhang Xielin, Zheng Huaiying, Zeng Minzhi, Zhuang Jiafu, and Qi Da Zheng.
In England, so many thanks to Jennifer Montagu, Jeremy Montagu, and Nicole Montagu for sharing their memories. Thanks to Diane Rowe. Thanks to Robert Sinclair and Diane Webb and all those at the English Table Tennis Association in Hastings for access to the archives. Thank you to Ben Macintyre, Nigel West, and Boris Volodarsky.
Thank you to Chuck Hoey of the International Table Tennis Federation Museum for his guidance.
Thank you to Vladimir Paley and Professor Galina Barchukova in Russia.
In the United States, many thanks to Keith Cowan and Sandy Lechtick, to Rufford Harrison and Connie and Dell Sweeris, to Tim Boggan and Judy Bochenski-Hoarfrost. Many thanks to Doug Spelman, Marcia Burick, Rory Hayden, Victor Li, and Perry Link for sharing their memories of the 1972 return tour. Special thank
s to Jan Berris, who opened up her prodigious phone book to help, as well as allowing me access to the archives of the National Committee on United States–China Relations. Thank you to Herbert Levin, Ambassador Winston Lord, and Seymour and Audrey Topping. Thanks to Professor Hongshan Li and Professor Minxin Pei for taking their time to talk to me. Thanks to Kai Chen.
To an American original, Marty Reisman, who sadly passed away in 2012, the only person I’ve ever interviewed who kept the same conversation going over phone, coffee, phone, lunch, phone, phone, phone.
Very special thanks to William J. Cunningham, an invaluable resource. He allowed me to study his own collection of papers he’d been gathering in the forty years since he found himself picking up the phone in the Tokyo Embassy in April 1971. He was ever patient with me, going over the events of those days almost hour by hour.
In New Zealand, many thanks to the veteran players Alan Tomlinson, Bryan Foster, and Murray Dunn, who were all kind enough to go through scrapbooks and cast their minds back to the Beijing of more than fifty years ago.
Many thanks to all who helped me at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, those at the National Archives in Kew, and the archivists at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, England, most especially Darren Treadwell.
I’d like to thank Sim Smiley in Washington for her help in dealing with the National Archives. Thanks also to Sunil Joshi and Susan Lee in New York for their help in the early days of this project. Thank you, New York Public Library. You might just be the best place in the world to read, to write, to stare at the ceiling.
An enormous thank you to Sunny Yang in Beijing. She saved me again and again from asking the wrong questions in the wrong order to the wrong people and was invaluable in helping me navigate along paths that were barely visible to me. To Lijia Zhang, so many thanks for your kindness that made a city of around 20 million seem smaller than it is and ever more fascinating.
The initial person I interviewed for this project was Robert Oxnam, former president of the Asia Society, who first wrote out the characters for table tennis in Mandarin for me. His explanation that the two characters of Ping-Pong are deliberately mirrored to suggest a poetic, yet military form of diplomacy was something I kept in mind through every subsequent trip or interview.
Thanks to Rob de Salle at the American Museum of Natural History. His revelation of the strange benefits that table tennis brings to both brain and body lent an extra dimension to my research and made me take up the game again.
I’d like to thank everyone at Scribner for rolling the dice on an idea that spanned espionage, famine, détente, and table tennis. Brant Rumble is the rare editor who knows how to operate without anesthesia and yet causes no pain. John Glynn helped wield that sharp knife.
Many thanks to my agent, David Kuhn, and the team at Kuhn Projects. Every writer needs an expert dowser, and David sorted through a mountain of my jumbled ideas to make me focus on this particular subject.
I’d like to thank those who gave me invaluable feedback as I approached the end of the project. To Lea Carpenter, Amanda Shuman, Bill Luers, Mike Meyer, Lijia Zhang, and Bill Cunningham. Sincerest thanks to you all. All remaining errors are my own.
Thanks to my parents for encouraging this from the start, for putting a roof over my head on London research trips, and for proofreading version one. Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law for hosting me on my swing toward Hastings and to Gabriel for his vocal support.
Thanks to Patty and Gustavo, who treated me to table tennis tickets in Beijing in 2008. That afternoon changed the next five years of my life.
OB, I’ve never written anything you haven’t read first. There’s a reason; you have no mercy.
I thank my wife, Adriana, because even though I went around the world for this book, she traveled double the distance most months for her own work and could still be wife, mother, superwoman, and always my first adviser.
To my children, Tomás and Eva, this book is for you. Mostly because for years you kept opening the door to my room to see how this was going. Also, I thank you both for believing that the entire New York Public Library was your dad’s office and that it was much, much bigger than everyone else’s.
NICHOLAS GRIFFIN is a journalist and author of four novels and one work of nonfiction. His writing has appeared in The Times (UK), The Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and other publications on topics as disparate as sports and politics, piracy, filmmaking in the Middle East, and the natural sciences. Griffin has written for film and was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Miami with his wife and two children.
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Notes
Prologue
a form of war waged for world revolution: Shih Pen-shan, as told to Lester Velie, “I Fought in Red China’s Sports War,” Reader’s Digest, June 1967.
Chapter 1 | Not-So-Humble Beginnings
felt thoroughly cheated: Montagu, Youngest Son, 35.
casting a warmth and amber glow: Levine, Politics, Religion and Love, 8.
Ivor played in the garden: Interview with Sidney Cole, IWM, 15618 (Reel 1), recorded May 3, 1995.
solemnly . . . dropped it: Montagu, Youngest Son, 67.
the thin one was the family pedigree: Ibid., 17.
born to an observant Jew: Levine, Politics, Religion and Love, 16.
the current Lord Montagu would agree: Montagu, Youngest Son, 20.
Lord Swaythling, whom the people knew: Levine, Politics, Religion and Love, 14.
Three miles divided: Report of Lord Swaythling’s funeral, Financial Times, January 17, 1911.
obsessed with breeding cows: Author interview with Jennifer Montagu.
used for bridge: Michael Davies, “Ping-Pong Diplomats,” The Observer, April 3, 1977.
Oh what’s this very funny game: Estes, A Little Book of Ping-Pong Verse, 34.
The Ping-Pong face: Ibid., 91.
suffered no slow lingering agonies: Bergmann, Twenty-One Up, 5.
Apparently the Ping-Pong nets: Steve Grant, “When Ping-Pong Came to Asia,” Table Tennis Collector (autumn 2008), quoting Daily Mirror, February 4, 1904.
like all great men: “The Death of Lord Swaythling,” Financial Times, June 13, 1927.
Chapter 2 | Gentlemanly Rebel
several hours on hands: “Seven Men,” Daily Express, April 24, 1971.
give a lecture: Montagu, Youngest Son, 17. Between his idyllic country wanderings, Montagu attended school in London. His parents had wanted him to board in the city, but within days he ended up before the headmaster. There were only four boarders, and as soon as lights were out, the older two ordered the younger pair “to tickle one of our older companions in strange places” (p. 78). From then until his admission to Cambridge, he remained, at his parents’ insistence, a “day boy.”
he’d leave the hat: “Dynamo and Man of Peace,” Daily Worker, May 19, 1959.
minestrone and wobbly pink blancmange: Montagu, Youngest Son, 134.
the Spillikins: Swann and Aprahamian, Bernal: A Life, 206.
were political . . . I saw in Table Tennis: Montagu, Youngest Son, 220.
chess on steroids: Author interview with Rob Desa
lle, January 2011.
it’s much more intense: Ibid.
Chapter 3 | Roast Beef and Russia
juicy roast beef and crackly roast potatoes: Montagu, Youngest Son, 282.
futuristic costumes: Ibid., 301.
thoroughly infested with worms: Ivor Montagu, “Like It Was,” unpublished autobiography, 108, Box 2.3, Montagu Collection, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester, UK.
Sicilian pole-cat who died: “Dynamo and Man of Peace,” Daily Worker, May 19, 1959.
One of his first jobs: Ivor Montagu, “Working with Hitchcock,” Sight and Sound 49 (summer 1980).
I suppose I could leave tonight: Montagu, “Like It Was,” 22, Box 2.3.
a letter of this kind: Crossman, God That Failed, 56.
in Montagu’s wake: Notes from ITTF Conference, London, March 1946.
Chapter 4 | The Dangers of Derision
Before his life in Ping-Pong: Ivor Montagu, “Table Tennis and South Africa,” Table Tennis VIII, no. 6 (February 1950).
Ping-Pong Diplomacy Page 29