During the Chinese Ping-Pong Team's visit to New York in 1972, Jan Berris (second left) and her parents meeting table tennis players Zhuang Zedong and Huang Hua [Photo provided to China Daily]

Berris has neither. In fact her decision to focus on China studies at the University of Michigan was mostly fueled by an early interest in Hawaii, where large Chinese and Japanese populations live. "I've always wanted to study and learn about cultures different than my own," says Berris, who concedes that "working for the committee does give me a chance to call those who wrote my textbooks by their first names".

These days Berris has become some sort of institutional memory for the national committee, a fixture who has "survived on minimal sleep and the occasional can of tuna", to quote one of her colleagues who eight years ago joined others to celebrate her 40th year with the committee. (The video can be seen on the committee website.)

Jay Henderson, a China expert and senior adviser to the China Global Philanthropy Institute in Beijing and Shenzhen, worked with Berris in the 1970s and '80s and continues to be a close friend.

"She is an absolute whirlwind of action," Henderson says. "I remember one occasion when we were trying to mail invitations to our 600-plus members for an event that was happening very soon. It was so close that we absolutely had to get the invitations in the mail that day.… So she called me into her office and we sat on the floor to stuff the invitations into envelopes, lick them with our tongues and seal them.

"We were doing this when Jan received a phone call from the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who wanted her advice on how to handle a sensitive situation with China. Without stopping or moving from the floor to her desk, she took the call and gave her best advice to the CEO, who never knew that she continued to stuff, lick and seal."