Zhuang Zedong

Zhuang Zedong 庄则栋
Zhuang Zedong in 2007 (photo: Tom Nguyen)
Nationality	Chinese
Born	(1940-08-25)August 25, 1940 Yangzhou, Jiangsu, China
Died	February 10, 2013(2013-02-10) (aged 72) Beijing, China

Zhuang Zedong (Chuang Tse-tung; August 25, 1940 – February 10, 2013) was a Chinese table tennis player, three-time world men's singles champion and champion at numerous other table tennis events and a well-known political personality during the tumult of the Cultural Revolution. His chance meeting with American table tennis player, Glenn Cowan, during the 31st World Table Tennis Championship, later referred to as ping-pong diplomacy, triggered the first thawing of the ice in Sino-American relations since 1949. Zhuang was once married to the pianist Bao Huiqiao, and his second wife was the Chinese-born Japanese Atsuko Sasaki (佐々木敦子).

Zhuang was born in August 1940 and he joined the Chinese National Table Tennis team as a teenager. His coach was Fu Qifang. In 1961, at the 26th World Table Tennis Championship, he won his first men's singles championship, and at the next two World Table Tennis Championships, the 27th and 28th in 1963 and 1965 respectively, he again won the men's singles championship.

On January 20, 1968, two years into the Cultural Revolution, he married Bao Huiqiao in her dormitory room at the National Music Conservatory in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution which began in 1966, Zhuang was not able to pursue his career as a table tennis player as usual, nor was Bao hers as a pianist.

Influenced by a veteran national team member and national champion Wang Chuanyao, and encouraged by his coach, Zhuang picked up the "Dual-sided Offense" style in the 1950s when he was a teenager.