Here's the full version of my oral history of the Bullets' historic 1979 trip to China.
It was published in truncated form in The Washington Post on Sept. 13, 2009.
It was published in truncated form in The Washington Post on Sept. 13, 2009.
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Coming just months after President Jimmy Carter normalized relations with China, the historic 1979 trip helped infect the land of Yao Ming with hoops fever. Last week, the franchise, now named the Wizards, sent a delegation back to China for an anniversary tour that includes stops in Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangzhou and concludes on Tuesday. The traveling party includes former Bullets star Wes Unseld and his wife, Connie, both of whom were on the first trip, as well as current Wizards star Caron Butler, who wasn't yet alive when the Bullets brought the NBA to the newly opened nation.
Some of the old Washington globetrotters tell the story of that 1979 trip in their own words:
Jerry Sachs, then-Bullets president: We won the NBA championship in 1978, and Abe Pollin took the team and wives to Israel. He decided it would be a great thrill to go to China the following year. He talked to his friends at the State Department, who talked to the Chinese, and they sent us an invitation.
John Thomson, then-counselor for cultural affairs at the U.S. Embassy in China: We had just normalized relations with China and there was really a good atmosphere. We'd brought the Boston Symphony over in March; it was a big deal that the team was coming. It was part of the opening up of China.
Jan Berris, then-program director for the nonprofit National Committee on U.S.-China Relations:
The State Department contacted us in February of 1979 saying that Abe Pollin was interested in bringing the Bullets to the People's Republic of China. They had Abe work with us since we were the only people in the United States who knew how to do these things. We'd spent much of the '70s sending every amateur sports team you can imagine to China: diving, basketball, soccer, volleyball and, of course, ping-pong in 1971. The Bullets were the first professional team going; it was significant.We did the initial negotiations with the Chinese, found an escort interpreter for the Bullets and provided briefing materials. We also sent a staffer to brief them.
Roger Phegley, a 1978 first-round draft pick: There were a lot of guidelines. They didn't want the women wearing makeup or jewelry. They wanted us to dress pretty casual.
Wes Unseld, Washington's star center: They just told us not to do anything stupid -- which as members of a professional team we were apt to do sometimes. There were also a lot of shots we had to take. I learned some Chinese, too: hello, goodbye, I'm sorry -- things like that. I did what I did just the other day: I stopped to get some Chinese food and talked to the lady at the counter. It was the only place I could think of to go.
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The traveling party included players, coaches and executives, along with their wives. They flew from Washington to San Francisco to Tokyo to China, landing in the city then known as Peking. Shanghai and Canton were also on the 13-day itinerary.
Jerry Sachs: When we landed in Peking, everybody had to get their own bags, which the players were not used to. They had two buses waiting for us. One was a school bus, the other was a more elegant minibus. The players started to board the minibus, but the Chinese said, no, no -- that's reserved for the team executives. The players weren't used to that treatment, either.
David Osnos, the team's general counsel: We stayed in old, beat-up hotels that had maybe been built in the '20s. They were not particularly elegant.
Jerry Sachs: The finest hotel in Beijing wasn't available to us because Vice President Walter Mondale was visiting China at the same time. We were relegated to one of the No. 2 hotels. The conditions were a bit rustic. We go to our rooms, and obviously the beds didn't fit our players; they had to put mattresses on the floor. And there was no air conditioning.
John Thomson: Nobody had air conditioning. Except the embassy.
Wes Unseld: We weren't sitting in the rooms watching TV. In fact, there was no TV.
Bob Dandridge, the starting small forward: I don't know what time we got in that first night, but at 5 in the morning, I was still up at the hotel. Somebody suggested we look out the window. It was just awesome -- a couple thousand people passing by on bicycles. And everything was so orderly. Nobody was running into each other. That was one of the most fascinating sights I've ever seen.
Roger Phegley: It was bicycle after bicycle after bicycle, bumper to bumper and eight to 10 wide, and every bicycle looked exactly alike. They were black and white and were all made by the same company. I always joked that when you park that baby, then come out of the store, how would you know which one is yours?
Dick Motta, the head coach: Everything was uniform. Everyone had the same haircuts and wore the same clothes.
Dave Corzine, another 1978 first-round draft pick: Most of the places we went, there'd be large crowds of Chinese all wearing the same thing, coming up to our waist, gathering around us. Obviously, we didn't quite fit in.
Wes Unseld: Throngs of people would stop to see who and what we were. I remember being in Tienanmen Square, and literally thousands of people gathered around us, just to see what we were doing there. To see a bunch of big, tall and, in a lot of cases, African American guys in China was something different.
Roger Phegley: You'd take a picture of the huge crowd with a Polaroid, and that baby would develop right in front of their faces and the Chinese would just freak out when they saw themselves. I don't think they'd ever seen that before. The Polaroids were a big hit. We also gave away Bic pens that said "Washington Bullets" on them, and it was like we were giving away hundred-dollar bills.
Jerry Sachs: Just about every night we were in Beijing and Shanghai, we had official dinners and receptions in our honor. And it was custom to toast between every course a liquor called Maotai, which is just the worst-tasting stuff. The protocol was for the leader of the host Chinese delegation to get up and make a toast to his American friends and colleagues. Then Abe would do likewise to the Chinese. The second course would come, and the No. 2 Chinese guy would do it, then the No. 2 guy in our delegation. This went on for the whole meal. The Maotai was horrendous, so we were pouring it in plants. We just couldn't handle it. I got sick drinking that stuff in Shanghai.
Stephen Markscheid, drafted out of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies to work with the team as an escort-interpreter: Some of the players had difficulty adjusting to the food. One of them said: "Steve, you've gotta get us some Big Macs!" Wes Unseld was among the more culturally interested players.
Wes Unseld: At the hotel in Peking, they had American food on one side, and the other side was Chinese food. My wife and I, we had Chinese everything. Why go to China and eat bacon and eggs?
Jerry Sachs: We'd been advised that people might want to bring food with them. Our trainer, John Lally, packed a whole suitcase of food, including cans of tuna fish. I think one of our young players, Kevin Porter, subsisted on tuna during the trip.
David Osnos: My wife and I brought a few packages of cheese crackers, just to have around when we got hungry, and Mrs. Pollin did as well. But I've always liked Chinese food, so I thought it was wonderful. When you eat Peking duck in Peking, it's damn good. I passed on the eyeballs. But Elvin Hayes -- who incidentally had more skill with chopsticks than any American that I saw -- ate the eyes.
Bob Dandridge: It was not the Chinese food that I had been eating on Connecticut Avenue. It surely was not that. But most of the dishes -- with the exception of the eyeballs -- were good quality. We ate the best while we were there.
Roger Phegley: At one dinner, they brought out this big tureen of soup that smelled like a river. I know that smell; I live in Peoria, which is a river town. All of the sudden I notice that the tablecloth's getting wet. Well, there's this great, big fish in the soup and the gills are moving and the tail's flipping and it's splashing soup onto the tablecloth. It tasted a lot like raw fish. And in '79, sushi wasn't that popular yet.
Dave Corzine: I was thrilled to get to Hong Kong. Most of us headed straight to McDonald's.
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The group got VIP treatment: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square. There were also celebratory receptions and banquets -- including one hosted in honor of Mondale by the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping.
Jerry Sachs: We made friends with some of Walter Mondale's staff and they accorded us invitations to the official reception that Deng Xiaoping gave for Mondale. We went through the receiving line and to our delight, Deng Xiaoping was a basketball fan. I have from that event the place cards of Deng Xiaoping and Walter Mondale; I went to their table at the end of the reception and took those, along with the chopsticks and our menu. We have that framed in our house. It's a lovely remembrance of an extraordinary odyssey.
Stephen Markscheid: I was really keen to be there and to be out and about. And it struck me that some of the players felt put-upon to have to do this when they were supposed to be in their off-season.
Wes Unseld: I was a history major in college and wanted to see everything I could. I wanted to experience all of it. I took tons of pictures. We took a bus to the Great Wall, and a couple of my teammates didn't get off the bus. I don't know if they were tired or what, but I was embarrassed.
Bob Dandridge: The tomb of Chairman Mao stood out. There were a long line to view the tomb and we sort of came from behind a wall and all of the sudden here was Chairman in a glass enclosure. It was shocking. I didn't expect to see him right away.
Roger Phegley: I drew a lot of attention taking a picture of Democracy Wall with a flash camera. Two men with guns politely told me not to take flash pictures at night. They gave us the impression we were free to go wherever we wanted to, but every time you looked over your shoulder, there were guys with guns following you.
Dave Corzine: It felt very much like a police state. They continually reinforced to us that we should not leave the hotel without somebody escorting us and shouldn't interact with or talk to the Chinese people on the street. They were really protective and restrictive. They wanted to isolate us. I was scared. Communist China was no place to get lost or be detained; I just wanted to get in and out.
Jan Berris: I first went in '73, and nobody ever felt that they were constantly being watched. In fact, everybody I took who had also been to the Soviet Union always compared the two and said how open and comfortable and relaxed China was.
David Osnos: I won't say it seemed open, but it certainly didn't seem like a police state to me. Our general manager and resident humorist Bob Ferry was talking to the Mondale people at one point, and there was a very self-important man from their group who was whispering and conspiratorially, telling Ferry that he thought his room had been bugged. He was so unimportant that it was inconceivable. Well, Ferry looked at him with a dead serious expression and said: "Me, too." He paused for a moment, then said: "Cockroaches."
Wes Unseld: I came out of the hotel fairly early one morning to jog by myself. When I got tired, I didn't know where the hell I was. Had absolutely no clue. I didn't remember how I got there or what turns I made. I started to see if I could backtrack and I realized I didn't even know the name of the hotel I was in. Finally, I saw a camera crew that had followed us to China. They were driving back in a truck and hollered at me. I might still be over there if I didn't see them.
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There were clinics and, of course, games -- including one against the August 1 Army Team, whose featured attraction was 7-foot-3, 330-pound center Mu Tieju. After the Bullets beat the Chinese Army team, 96-85, General Manager Bob Ferry described Mu as "the biggest pagoda we've seen in China."
Dick Motta: He was so gigantic, he could have joined Barnum and Bailey. He was the biggest human I'd ever seen. He wasn't much of a player and couldn't move very well, but boy, he was big.
Jerry Sachs: Mr. Mu couldn't move very well. Actually, he couldn't move at all. But he was huge. Wesley looked like a toothpick next to him.
Wes Unseld: I remember how swift I felt against that big dude. And I remember the reality shock when I came back and realized that I wasn't really so swift.
Roger Phegley: We went to a banquet afterwards and I shook Mr. Mu's hand in the receiving line. My hand's not huge, but it's a fairly good size. When I put my hand in his, my fingertips didn't reach around the other side of his palm. It amazed me so much that I got back in line -- and I still couldn't get my fingertips to wrap around the other side of the guy's palm.
Wes Unseld: The Chinese played a methodical game. They were steeped in the fundamentals and could execute, but there weren't a lot of the nuances that we played with, or the speed and the quickness getting up and down the court.
Stephen Markscheid: It was friendly competition, but our guys were so much more skillful than the Chinese. Basketball wasn't the most popular sport in China in 1979. Of course, it's become more popular since then.
David Osnos: I was instructed by the NBA that there had to be a contract permitting Chinese broadcasters to televise the game. So I worked out a three-sentence contract pursuant to which they were to pay us a dollar for the rights. They never paid the dollar, by the way. But they told me that something like 500 million people had watched our games.
Bob Dandridge: There wasn't a whole lot of cheering, like there would have been here. The fans were very orderly.
Wes Unseld: It was very light applause, almost like tennis. There was no going wild with the flags and the drums and all of that like you see in some countries with club teams.
David Osnos: It was astonishing how the Chinese people exited the arena. Each row starting at the top would march out with perfect discipline and at top speed. They must've emptied these two enormous arenas -- one in Beijing, one in Shanghai, each seating around 20,000 people -- in something like two minutes.
Dick Motta: I did a clinic with some of the players and there were 19,500 coaches there, from every province. We worked for three hours and there was not one sound from the stands. But you could tell basketball was getting popular. Everywhere you went and there was open space, you saw a basketball hoop. They loved it. It was just a matter of time before they developed it.
Jan Berris: I think the trip inspired a lot of young kids in China. In those days, ping pong and badminton were the most popular sports. Now it's basketball. The excitement of having the Washington Bullets visit really registered.
