Ping-Pong Diplomacy unfolded around the time that Einreinhofer was in high school. And he could remember very little about it. "People don't know about this anymore. They either forgot or they were too young. They never heard about it," he said. So Einreinhofer started researching and realized "how profound that moment in history was".

"At the same time, I wanted to take the lessons from the past and see if there was a way to apply them today. That's when I discovered how powerful it can be when college and university students from China and the US visit each other's countries.

"They can play a really important role in helping both sides better understand one another and in creating a line of communication that might not exist otherwise," Einreinhofer said.

The documentary also tells the stories of present-day people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States, focusing on international students.

Roxanne Roman is one of the characters in the documentary. She was a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2018, and is a graduate of NYU Shanghai.

"It is really great to see that there's still a lot of effort and desire in working on people-to-people relations, especially in times of tense relations. So I think, in a really chaotic time, it really resonated with some of the messaging, still trying to find ways to talk, to relate and to be interested in different cultures and in each other," Roman told China Daily.

"Whether from the perspective of a scholar or as an individual, it's been a great opportunity for exchange and personal growth. During the production of the film, I also shared what my own life is like … what it means to live in the US and how it's different. These differences can offer new insights for others in the future," Ziheng Wang, associate producer of Your Serve or Mine, told China Daily.

The documentary "highlights the power of people-to-people connections, the kind that continue today through exchanges of students, educators and professionals across all fields," Joy Zhu, executive vice-president for the China region at NYFA, said at the premiere.

minluzhang@chinadailyusa.com