Table tennis legend Zhuang Zedong dies at 73
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E-mail Xinhua, February 10, 2013
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A file photo of Chinese Table tennis legend Zhuang Zedong. [Photo/Xinhua] |
Table tennis legend Zhuang Zedong, who played a major role in ping-pong diplomacy, died in a Beijing hospital on Sunday after lengthy illness. He was 73.
Zhuang had been suffering from cancer and his condition grew worse last July and had developed complications from liver failure.
Zhuang, who won a horde of events in the 1960s, is famed for his chance meeting with a US table tennis player Glenn Cowan during the 31st World Table Tennis Championships in 1971.
The term ping-pong diplomacy describes exchanges of table tennis players in the early 1970s between China and the United States in hope of normalizing the two countries' relations.
Zhuang married his second wife, Chinese-born Japanese Sasaki Atsuko, in 1987.
Zhuang was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer in August 2008, with complications in his liver and lungs.
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