With China today being at the forefront of so many political discussions, it is easy to forget the formal relations between the U.S. and the Communist nation did not exist into the 1970s. As the United States sought out to battle Communism by isolating nations — diplomatically when possible, and by military force when not — China was near the top of their list. Indeed it was Chinese entry into the Korean War that thwarted American progress in North Korea. But after China and Russia fought a series of low-grade military skirmishes over their mutual borders, in 1969, both China and the U.S. recognized that they had a greater opponent than each other.

On this day, January 29 in 1979 the Chinese leader and Vice Premier Den Xiaoping visited the United States for the first time since the formation of the Communist People’s Republic of China.

Although official relations were held up by a number of critical diplomatic conflicts, the U.S and China, in what was called “Ping Pong Diplomacy,” began circling each other years before that. At the 1971 international table tennis championships, Glenn Cowan, an American player, missed the team bus from the practice area to the tournament site. In a spontaneous display of camaraderie, a fellow Chinese player waved him onto the Chinese team bus. Cowan conversed briefly with the Chinese players, and was presented with a silkscreen portrait of a Chinese mountain range. As a return gift, Cowan later presented his new Chinese friend with a gift shop-purchased t-shirt with the peace sign and the words “Let it be.”