TMCnet News
Japanese, Chinese table tennis veterans reunite in Beijing+(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)BEIJING, April 1_(Kyodo) _ Japanese and Chinese table tennis veterans from the 1956 world championships reunited in Beijing on Saturday to mark the 50th anniversary of the competition held in Tokyo. The table tennis players met in the morning for a tree-planting ceremony to kick off a three-day event that will feature ping-pong matches as well as a meeting with Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan. The 1956 competition in the Japanese capital was the first international sporting event that China took part in after the 1949 Communist revolution. "Just by seeing each other again, the past comes back to us," Koji Kimura, general director of the Japan Table Tennis Association, said at the ceremony. Xu Yinsheng, head of China's table tennis organization, said, "We hope that the tree we planted will remind both our old friends and the new generation of the importance of friendship between the two countries." Relations between Japan and China are at their lowest ebb since their normalization in 1972, mainly due to a row over Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the war-linked Yasukuni Shine in Tokyo. China has bitterly complained about Koizumi's shrine visits, saying they show that Japan does not truly repent its wartime atrocities. |