By MAY ZHOU in Houston | China Daily | Updated: 2021-05-11 06:30 Share CLOSE Bernard Loeffke with China's swimming national champion in 1980 while serving at the US embassy in Beijing. PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY Bernard Loeffke, retired US Army major general, motivated by own experiences While this year marks the 50th anniversary of Ping-Pong Diplomacy, which was started by American and Chinese table tennis players and led to sports and cultural exchanges between the two nations, retired US Army Major General Bernard Loeffke remembers how it was before then. During the Vietnam War, the 1957 graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point was wounded by Vietnamese forces, who were trained and equipped by Chinese.