Harvard center Zena Edosomwan pulls out his cellphone and scrolls back to the photos from his last trip to China. There, he finds a picture of himself at a Chinese market with a small boy of about 6 years old sitting high on his shoulders.

“There’s so much love and positive energy there,” Edosomwan said last week as he prepared to return to China — this time with the Crimson basketball team for its game against Stanford on Friday night. “A lot of Stanford and Harvard players are going to be surprised. They’re going to be like rock stars there.”

Two of the top academic universities in the United States, Harvard and Stanford are visiting Shanghai this week to open their men’s basketball seasons — and do a little brand-building while they’re at it. The schools are already well-known internationally — Harvard has 1,802 students and scholars from China, according to its website — but few there think of basketball when they think of the two prestigious institutions.

“It’s an amazing chance, and we’re proud to be a part of it, proud to represent this great brand, this great school in China,” Harvard coach Tommy Amaker said last week as he prepared to visit the country for the first time. “We’re not just thinking just for us; we’re representing Harvard. We try to do that wherever we go.”

For Stanford, it’s the third in-season international trip in the program’s 102-year history (Mexico, 2009; Bahamas, 2012), though the team visited Rome, Florence, Venice and Como during a summer tour of Italy in 2015. This year’s visit by the Pac-12 follows one last year, when Washington beat Texas, and completes a two-year deal. Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said he is working on extending the commitment.

Visiting Harvard last week, NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said the trip reminded him of the “ping pong diplomacy” of President Richard Nixon’s administration and hoped it would help break down barriers between the nations.

“College sports diplomacy is a great trend,” he said. “It’s a great game, and I think it’s a great entrie for people to interact.”