China's national women's boxing team may have only been formed in 2010, but they're already aiming for Olympic gold. Huey Fern Tay of Australia Network News reports. more ›

Yao Ming might be accruing guanxi up the wazoo with his new standing committee gig, but it's Shaquille O'Neal who truly speaks to the people! Shaq showed up for Hunan TV's Spring Gala Festival to run around on stage with kiddie monks, and went through his usual patented brand of kung foolery while trying not to step on the children. more ›

Now with the NBA lockout tentatively resolved, training camp and free agency are just around the corner, scheduled to begin on December 9th. Which means the likes of Wilson Chandler, J.R. Smith, Kenyon Martin and Aaron Brooks are probably wracking their brains for ways out of their contracts harder than Kim Basinger after she signed up to do Boxing Helena. more ›

False alarm, folks! Despite earlier reports that J.R. Smith's right knee was in dire trouble, it looks as if the Zhejiang Golden Bulls swingman is actually in fine shape. After being subbed in during the second quarter of the Bulls' home game against the Dongguan Leopards on Tuesday night, Smith went off for 15 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists during 30 minutes of action, helping his new team win in a 101-73 blowout. more ›

Shanghai Shenhua apparently have set their sights on signing none other than Chelsea's mercurial forward Nicolas Anelka during next January's transfer window. more ›

Alas, perhaps sweet, sweet dunkage wasn't meant to be. During his first game of the new CBA season against the Guangdong Southern Tigers in Dongguan, J.R. Smith of the Zhejiang Golden Bulls (and formerly of the Denver Nuggets), is now out of action indefinitely with an injured right knee. more ›

In the pictures we shared a week back of Yao Ming's first day in class, we interpreted his face as an open book of frustration and WTF? Turns out we were right on the money, as Yao himself admitted in a press conference he was "totally lost." more ›

"Toronto, Cincinnati, New York, Tokyo, Beijing, Istanbul." more ›

Tennis star, Li Na, who became the first Chinese player, and the first national of an Asian country to bring home a Grand Slams title earlier this year, stunned her fans in Beijing yesterday by crashing out of the China Open. The world number five was defeated 6-4, 6-0 by Romanian qualifier Monica Niculescu. more ›

Former Houston Rockets center Yao Ming will study in the prestigious Shanghai Jiaotong University from October, his agent Zhang Mingji said here on Monday. Zhang said that Yao has not decided his major but the university will choose special teachers and give the super star lessons on a one-to-one basis.

A new swimming star has been born. 19-year-old Chinese swimmer Sun Yang (孙杨) yesterday broke Grant Hackett's iconic 10-year world record in 1500m freestyle, touching in 14 minutes 34.14 seconds. This is Sun's second gold medal at the world swimming championships. Earlier, he took home the 800m freestyle gold and 400m freestyle silver. More good things are expected of the young man at the London Olympics in 2012 so this definitely won't be the last we'll hear of him. more ›

A good man may shed blood, but he should never shed tears, so the Chinese adage goes. At Yao Ming's retirement press conference yesterday, he was seen turning away from the glare of the media to shed a few tears. more ›

If there's ever a need for a Chinese neologism to express a frustrating state of affairs that doesn't meet expectations, we'd put forth Yao Ming's Left Foot (姚明左脚, as in '这个聚会太姚明左脚了') as our suggestion. The foot, who's status and health hundreds of millions of Chinese basketball devotees had clung to for years, will no longer be taking the shocks and pivots of a 7 foot 6 and 310 pound (141kg and 229cm) frame: Yao is reportedly retiring. The weight of an entire nation won't burden his metatarsals and phalanges anymore. more ›

China's flying hurdler, Liu Xiang (刘翔) has done it again. Yesterday in Kobe, Japan, Liu clocked 13.22 seconds in the 110-hurdles event, re-writing the Asian Athletics Championships record. The first Chinese athlete to achieve the "triple crown" of athletics (World Record Holder, World Champion and Olympic Champion), Liu has been making a steady comeback since his shocking pullout from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His world record of 12.88 seconds, set 2006 at the Super Grand Prix in Lausanne, was broken by Cuba's Dayron Robles two years later. Robles continues to hold the world record of 12.87 seconds today. more ›

Oh the sheer audacity. more ›

Athletes: what would they be without a little wanton drunkenness every now and then? Reports have emerged that members of China's speed-skating team had an altercation with local police Monday night on the streets of Lijiang in Yunnan province. more ›

Earlier this month, we told you about a WildAid public service announcement starring Chinese basketballer Yao Ming that discouraged people from eating shark's fin soup. We weren't able to find a Youku video for you then but here it finally is (English version on Youtube here). Yao has been an ambassador against the shark's fin trade for a few years now since his public pledge in 2006 never to eat shark's fin soup again. In 2007, a small ruckus erupted prior to Yao's wedding dinner in Shanghai when the media reported that shark's fin would be served as the opening dish of the lavish 12-course dinner -- those rumours turned out to be untrue. Yao Ming's role as the anti-shark's fin guy makes great marketing sense because once upon a time, he used to play for a basketball club called the Shanghai Sharks. Last year he purchased his former club and saved it from financial ruin. Now he's doing all he can to ensure his club isn't named after an extinct animal.
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Hint: Tiger Woods is not one of them. Check out the whole list here. more ›

Attention, all y’all who want to capture some of that Olympic vitality: 5,000 official condoms distributed to athletes during the Beijing Olympics are finding their way to the auction block November 29 for…ahem…hard core collectors. The bidding price for the condoms, in special packages printed with “faster, higher, stronger,” (the Olympic motto), will start at 1RMB. Officials believe that most of the condoms were not in fact used, but taken home by participants as souvenirs - let’s hope these are the ones up for bid. more ›

Last week, China's diving team announced that it would skip the upcoming FINA Grand Prix in Fort Lauderdale due to swine flu fears. more ›

• China database to track children [BBC] "China is setting up a DNA database to help trace missing children, as the authorities struggle to tackle people trafficking. By the end of the month, a network of more than 200 DNA centres is due to be set up. Thousands of children in China are stolen or sold each year."
• More on Beijing doping: cyclist, runner, walker join list [LA Times] "Five down, one to go." On the list of athletes at the Beijing Olympics who doped: German cycler Stefan Schumacher, Croation 800-meter runner Vanja Persic and Greek race walker Athania Tsoumeleka.
• China announces regulations for financial information in settlement with US, Europe [AP] "Beijing announced rules that ease controls on foreign financial information providers Thursday under an agreement with the U.S., Europe and Canada, but said those already operating in China must apply for permission to continue. The rules eliminate a requirement that foreign providers must work through a Chinese agent and reduce the amount of information they must disclose about their operations."

Forbes has released its list of the Top 10 Chinese celebrities, which surveys the who's who of China to rank them based on personal income, public influence, internet reach and commercial value. more ›

First we heard that hurdler Liu Xiang (刘翔）would not likely recover from injury in time for world championships in August of this year, setting instead a target of returning for the Shanghai Grand Prix in September. Now, Team Liu seems to be prepping fans for the possibility that the one-time world record holder and former Olympic champion—whose failure to compete was China's biggest disappointment last August—might soon hang up his spikes for good. more ›

Michael Phelps (菲尔普斯) has signed the biggest ever endorsement contract for a Western celebrity in China, claims DMG Entertainment group, the agency that reportedly signed him to a seven-figure deal with Mazda. more ›

This summer, China was accused of using underage gymnasts in the Olympics. Now they've caught their own basketball players fudging their ages the other way. Thirty-six players in the China Basketball Association (almost 15% of the league) were found guilty of "age-shaving" Wednesday, and had their names submitted to FIBA, the governing body of international basketball, and the Asian Basketball Association. The identities of the offending parties were not made public. more ›

After a week-long trip to see doctors in the U.S., Chinese gold medal hurdler Liu Xiang (刘翔) has returned to Shanghai with his coach Sun Haiping and is set to undergo an operation soon. Prior to this trip, a conservative approach had been advised for the Achilles injury that led to Liu's shock withdrawal from the Beijing Olympics and Sun had always maintained that surgery would be a "last resort". Medical experts in the U.S. have advised that surgery is not just safe, but necessary to remove the three calcifications that have occurred between his bone and tendon, and Liu himself has said (through his coach) that he is willing to do "whatever it takes" to ensure he gets back on track. more ›

Bronze medalist windsurfer Shahar Zubari and Israel's only medal recipient at the Beijing Olympics has stirred up a storm of controversy after referring to the Chinese as "scum" in an interview with 7 Yamim, a weekend supplement of the mass-market daily Yedioth Ahronoth. The comments made by the 20 year old athlete led the Chinese embassy in Israel to cancel the party it had planned in honour of Israeli athletes who had participated in the Beijing Games, and sent Israel's Culture, Science and Sport Minister Raleb Majadele scrambling to send an apology to the Chinese ambassador:

"I would like to condemn the irresponsible remarks made by Shahar Zubari," Majadele wrote. more ›

Oksana Chusovitina: A mother's love knows no bounds and this is fully exemplified in the life story of Oksana Chusovitina, only one of a handful of women to stay in competitive gymnastics after motherhood. She formerly represented the Soviet Union and her native Uzbekistan and has competed for Germany since 2006. When her son Alisher was diagnosed in 2002 with leukemia and doctors in Moscow could not guarantee quality care, Chusovitina accepted an offer of help from the head coaches of the Toyota Cologne club and moved to Germany. With her competition prize money and funds raised by members of the international gymnastics community, she was able to secure treatment for her son at the University of Cologne's hospital while training with the German team. Chusovitina is the only female gymnast ever to compete in five Olympic Games, and won a silver in the vault final at the Beijing Games. more ›

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese. more ›