Return Engagement

With matching coats and plaid bags, the world champion Chinese table tennis team arrived in Detroit last week to start a two-week, nine-city good-will tour--the return engagement of last year's visit of the U.S. team to Peking. Their chartered Pan Am 707 carried two Mandarin-speaking stewardesses and bore the legend Friendship Clipper in Chinese characters. Delegation Leader, Chuang Tse-tung, 30, a three-time world champion (1961, 1963, 1965), promised that the team would concentrate on "friendship first, competition second."

Under heavy security escort, the team toured a Chrysler assembly line. "Who are you?" asked one auto worker. "Oh," he said when told, "I've always wanted to meet someone from Red China." With that, that particular proletarian dialogue died.

At their first match in Detroit's Cobo Hall, a Detroit right-wing group named Breakthrough showered leaflets from the balcony that said "Smash Communism, support Christian resistance." The capacity crowd of 11,000 booed the interruption, and cheered wildly as the tourists, obviously taking it easy in the spirit of friendship, rolled to a 5-1 victory.

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