Ming Yao

Chinese athlete, highly acclaimed center for the NBA’s Houston Rockets. After playing five seasons with the Shanghai Sharks, Yao (his last name) joined the Rockets as the number one draft pick in the 2002 NBA season. As of 2007, he had led his team to the playoffs three times and had been consistently selected as an all-star player. He played for the Chinese basketball team in the 2004 Olympics and carried his country’s flag during the opening ceremony. He is probably the best-known Chinese national living in the United States. Yao was literally made to play basketball. He is the product of an essentially arranged marriage between two star Chinese basketball players, his mother Fang Fengdi (6’2”) and father Yao Zhiyuan (6’7”). At his birth they were the tallest couple in China. He began basketball training at the age of nine at Shanghai’s Xuhui Sports School. Yao was initially a clumsy player. Ridicule and the painfully rigorous style of Chinese sports training led him to detest the game. As a child he wanted to be an archeologist, and he has retained a love of history in adulthood. He didn’t begin to take a real interest in the game he trained six days a week for until he was in his late teens. In 1992, Fang put Yao into a more academically challenging middle school, but he had started too far behind the other children and was soon sent back to the sports school. In 1994, he moved away from home to live at the Shanghai Sports Technology Institute, where he spent eight years. In 1997, Yao attended a Nike junior basketball camp in Paris, and the following year summer, he made a two-month basketball tour of the U.S., again in association with Nike. In 1999, under pressure from Chinese officials, he signed an extortionate contract that would have given one-third of his lifetime earnings to an American management company; negotiations to extricate him from it lasted three years. Soon after reneging on this contract, Yao signed a four-year, $20,000 endorsement deal with Nike. On October 21, 2002, after five seasons with the Shanghai Sharks, Yao became the number one NBA draft pick, signing an $18 million contract with the Houston Rockets, though because of a recent defection the Chinese government gave its approval just hours before the draft was scheduled to begin. Beginning his rookie year, he was selected as an NBA All-Star for five consecutive seasons. In the 2005-2006 season, he led the league in the all-star balloting with over 2.3 million votes. As of June 2007, he was averaging over 25 points per game and over 10 rebounds. His career high was in a February 2004 game against the Atlanta Hawks, where he scored 41 points and made 7 assists. Yao has continued to represent China in international sports. After playing with the Chinese national team at the 2004 Olympics, he led them to the FIBA World Championship tournament in 2006. In 2004, he published a memoir, “Yao: A Life in Two Worlds.” In 2005, he was the subject of a documentary called “The Year of Yao.” Yao’s mother began her basketball training at the age of 15 and retired at 28, in 1978. She was a fervent member of the Red Guard during the cultural revolution, joining at age seventeen. These activities came back to haunt her and her family when, in the late 1970s, her old coach—whom Fang had tormented and accused of counter-revolutionary activities—was rehabilitated and gained a high position on the Shanghai sports commission. Fang and her husband, who had married at the urging Read less