Results tagged “yaoming”

Oh no, it looks like Yao Ming hasn’t bought the Shanghai Sharks after all. Instead, all they’ve signed on to be is an “entrusted investor” for the next five years. Despite agreeing in July to transfer stakes in the Sharks to Yao, it seems that those stakes will now be sold on the open market. But those who worry that this just means even more disappointments for Sharks fans needn’t: Yao has said that even though he’s not the owner, he’ll be doing everything he can to improve the team’s performance.

Yeeha used to be a great place to go (at least for drinks, if not food). They had cheap beers, they had friendly service, and they had a frickin' awesome mechanical bull. Then something changed hands and the beers got more expensive, the service more apathetic, and the mechanical bull disappeared. And now so has the rest of the restaurant, to the surprise, it seems, of many of its employees. China Daily has the scoop about how much the restaurant (which incidentally doesn't even belong in any way to Yao, except that his friend started it) owes the many many people it hasn't paid in months. We're just disappointed that whoever owned the place didn't go back to making Yeeha worthy of the Yao name.

Yi Jianlian is so excited about not being forced to play in the Chinese National Games that the guy’s actually playing some good basketball. He scored 21 points and grabbed 11 boards in an exhibition game against the New York Knicks last Friday. In the Nets’ two previous games, against the Boston Celtics, Yi went for 20 and 8 in the first, but just 2 and 4 in the second.

Yao Ming, already do-gooder around town and anti-sharks fin activist, is now tackling another problem: smoking. The basketball superstar will now be acting as spokesperson for a new nationwide anti-smoking drive. He'll be delivering public service announcements to discourage people from lighting up and he'll be preaching the no smoke gospel with folk music singer Peng Liyuan, wife of China vice-president Xi Jinping and recent star of the 60th Anniversary gala.

The NBA is touching down in China this weekend, with the Indiana Pacers and Denver Nuggets playing a preseason game in Beijing. Ahead of the game, the league issued a press release that it decided to call "Bryant's jersey remains top seller in China."

We think the pictures speaks for itself, but in case you have trouble recognizing this triple threat of Chinese celebrity, that's Lang Lang playing air piano, Jackie Chan giving you the thumbs up and Yao Ming towering above them with a slightly deflated looking Haibao perched on his shoulder. Oh wait, maybe that makes this a fearsome foursome?

• Confucius? No, Yao Ming [Reuters] "Instead of a cultural icon, well-known author or scholar, President Barack Obama sought the advice of ... a basketball player as he talked of the importance of strong U.S.-Chinese economic ties. In a speech opening the Strategic Economic Dialogue between the United States and China, Obama - an avid basketball fan and player - quoted China's most popular sports star and Houston Rockets center, Yao Ming."
• Tenenbaum heads to China [The State] "Inez Tenenbaum, the nation's new consumer-safety chief, will make her debut on the world stage this week to warn Chinese and other major Asian exporters to expect tougher regulation of toys, drywall and other products found to have recent defects after entering the United States."
• Key to Chinese mayor's corruption hidden in Buddha's ear [People's Daily Online] "A former north China mayor and his wife concealed about 300,000 U.S. dollars in bribe money in a safe deposit box in a Buddhist temple, hiding the key in a Buddha statue's ear, a court heard Monday. Xu Guoyuan, former mayor of Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is accused of taking bribes worth more than 1 million U.S. dollars."

We guess even if Yao Ming's foot takes him away from playing the game, it doesn't mean he's out of basketball. The superstar athlete is becoming the new boss of his former team, the Shanghai Sharks. In what China Daily calls the highest profile deal in Chinese Basketball Association history, Yao Ming signed an agreement with all three of Shanghai Shark's current shareholders to buy their stakes. The 2.26m center said he is willing to “pay back his home team and Shanghai where he started his basketball career” and will “help Shanghai return to glory.” The last CBA championship the Sharks won was in the 2001-02 season with the help of Yao. Since he's left, the team's fallen into dire straits, placing second last most recently.

• Shishou official speaks out about riot [China Elections] "A blog entry posted by an official in Shishou has shed more light on the recent events in Shishou city, Hubei province. The blog is maintained by an official named Liu Guolin and details his perspective on the government's containment efforts in Shishou and lessons that can be learned from the handling of the incident. The blog entry marks a surprising break from usual government silence concerning such incidents and tight control usually asserted over official reports."
• China's smart grid ambitions could open door to US-China cooperation [needigest.com] "China’s largest electric transmission company has announced an ambitious plan to develop a national smart grid by 2020 that would help utilities and their customers transport and use energy more efficiently. The sheer size of the project raises some intriguing questions. First, about whether China has the capital and technology for such an extensive upgrade. And second, whether the project could provide an opening for U.S.-China cooperation on technological improvements that could benefit both."
• China launches first direct flight linking Beijing, Lhasa [People's Daily Online] "Air China, the nation's biggest carrier, said Wednesday it will launch the nation's first direct flight between Beijing and Lhasa, the capital city of southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region, beginning July 10 to promote tourism. The three-hour-fifty-minute flight will be operated by the Airbus A330. Previously, travelers had to transfer through Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province neighboring Tibet. The transfer added two hours to the flight."

Yao Ming may or may not be out for the count, but Shanghai sports lovers can still count on Liu Xiang to possibly bring them sports glory. The 26-year-old hurdler was in top form during an open training class at Shanghai's Xinzhuang Training Base, according to China Daily. Because of his Achilles tendon injury - the one that made all of China wail during the Beijing Olympics - he could still only train with sneakers, rather than spikes. But Liu Xiang put on a brave face, even ripping his shirt off and running aorund topless near the end of the session. That's all well and good, but our PC radar perked up at one of the reactions China Daily recorded from one of his foreign fans. French student Juliette Borque told the paper, "He is the first Chinese to win the Olympic gold medal (in the event). I thought it's interesting, since normally it is always black guys that win. So I started to follow him." Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep?

• Rockets could lose Yao for season or more [Yahoo! Sports] "As the NBA draft approached, the grim truth about Yao Ming’s(notes) broken left foot hung like an anvil over the Houston Rockets. The fear isn’t that he’s just lost for next season, but longer. The Rockets and Yao’s reps are frightened over his future, and the concern is the most base of all: Does Yao Ming ever play again?"
• Kobe Bryant Conquers China [WSJ] "One of the great curiosities in modern sports is the Chinese people’s lavish affection for Kobe Bryant. During last year’s Beijing Olympics, he was greeted with a rapturous reception and mobbed everywhere he went. He appears in commercials and on billboards, has a popular Web site and had a reality show on Chinese television. He sells more NBA jerseys there than Yao Ming. On Tuesday in Los Angeles, the love affair will reach a new level. Not only is Mr. Bryant accepting an award from the Asia Society for his work as a “cultural ambassador,” the ceremony will be attended by Liu Peng, China’s Secretary of Sport and a member of China’s Communist Party Central Committee."
• The strange, underground world of Chinese counterfeit cigarettes [Slate Magazine] "Ringed by thickly forested mountains, illicit cigarette factories dot the countryside, carved deeply into caves, high into the hills, and even buried beneath the earth. By one tally, some 200 operations are hidden in Yunxiao, a southwestern Fujian county about twice the area of New York City. Over the last 10 years, production of counterfeit cigarettes has soared in China, jumping eightfold since 1997 to an unprecedented 400 billion cigarettes a year—enough to supply every U.S. smoker with 460 packs a year. Once famed for its bright yellow loquat fruit, Yunxiao is the trade's heartland, the source of half of China's counterfeit production."

We knew you were curious about what song Jackie Chan sang this morning to welcome in the Expo year-long countdown, so we went and looked for it on Youku. Turns out there's already a video featuring Jackie, Lang Lang and Yao Ming!

NBA Commissioner David Stern is interviewed in a video from NBC Sports entitled "China's passion for basketball." Stern appears to have adopted his own passion for another Chinese invention: the comb-over.

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.

• Time to Board China's Infrastructure Train [Barrons.com] "Around 250 Chinese cities are planning to build new subway lines by 2015; the city of Changshang in central China alone is investing 22.4 billion yuan in two new subway lines." Changshang?
• China says U.S. provoked naval confrontation [LA Times] "China blamed the United States on Tuesday for a naval confrontation in the South China Sea over the weekend, contending that an American surveillance vessel was illegally conducting activities in China's special economic zone."
• Hoops in the Far East: A primer on China's basketball development [Sporting News] "Indeed, Yao has been away from the CBA long enough to have lost some perspective on it. But, in the coming years, the league figures to grow in importance. As crises in older economies around the world deepen, belt-tightening already has seeped into the basketball universe, with some players having trouble getting paid in Europe and with the NBA taking out a loan to prop up half of its struggling teams. China, though, is on the uptick, which figures to give its league more sway in the future."

What will the Chinese sports world be buzzing about in 2009? Here is a look at what could lie ahead this year. In no particular order, the top 10 sports stories in China for 2009:

Of the 22.6% of the country that now has access to the Internet, 162 million blog, while 234 million log on to read up on the news.

Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian square off in New Jersey Monday night. Notice how the I Heart China gang was there in full force. [H/t to John Shabe of NJ.com!]

The only two Chinese players currently in the starting lineup for NBA teams will face off in New Jersey Monday night, at 7:30 p.m. EST (8:30 a.m. Tuesday Beijing time). It is the third meeting, and the first this year, for Yao Ming (姚明) and Yi Jianlian (易建联). The game will air live on CCTV's sports channel.

              

Has Shrek always borne a striking resemblance to Yao Ming? Or is it the other way around? These movie posters of Olympic athletes, (well, the Chinese team and Michael Phelps) were posted on Chinese web site Mop.com and brought to our attention by Chinasmack.

China stumbled off to a poor first half in its match against Greece Monday evening, scoring only 24 points and missing every attempt at a three-pointer. In the third quarter, the team launched a strong comeback and managed to cut the deficit to 10 in the last three minutes, but Greece was simply too far ahead to beat. After the game, Yao Ming who led the team with 16 points to finish 91-77 was said to have walked past reporters without saying a word, shouting angrily at himself and punching his left hand as he left the tunnel. Speculation is that Yao was pissed off at being given 18 minutes to play by China coach Jonas Kazlauskas (from Lithuania), who when asked by the Wall Street Journal responded by saying:

"Yao is a fighter. He wants to play. He wants to fight, but he is a player and I am the coach... I am the one making these decisions . . . Yao should play for a long time, but today was not the time."

"Is that a basketball player? Does he play for our team? And I don't understand why you are asking a question about him."

WSJ: Olympic protestor VS Patriotic youth

With the opening Olympic tournament game against Team USA just around the corner, a less than fully recuperated Yao Ming finds himself sandwiched between angry fans on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Chinese fans blame the Rockets for the stress fracture Yao Ming sustained during this last NBA season, thus jeopardizing his upcoming performance and China's chances to shine in the Olympic tournament. American fans hurl back that it is the year round obligations to the Chinese National team that have worn him out, and remind the Chinese exactly who is footing Yao Ming's $15 million salary. Given the headache of dealing with pressure from both sides, it should come as no surprise when Yao stated that he would like this to be his final Olympic appearance.

"It will be my third," he said. "I was a very young player and got my first taste of the Olympics in 2000 at Sydney. I played in Athens in 2004 and now this is my home country and the highest special honor in 2008. Enough, I think. Why would I need to play in London in 2012?"

Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey probably has one thing to say to Yao Ming right now: Shut up.

In its second matchup this summer with future Olympic opponent Angola, China's men's national team won 83-74, behind 21 points from Yao Ming（姚明) and a strong performance from point guard Liu Wei（刘炜, pictured above). The teams are playing in the the FIBA Diamond Ball basketball tournament in Nanjing.

China Sports Today has added a database of Chinese athletes to its Web site. For athletes from Yao Ming (姚明, basketball) to Wang Nan (王楠, table tennis/ping pong), the site gives basic information, including the characters for athletes' Chinese names, their hometowns and career highlights, as well as video of past competitions or athlete interviews.

Yao Ming made his return to competition Thursday night, in China's Stankovic Cup game against Serbia, played in Hangzhou. Yao, recovering from a stress fracture in his foot, did not start and played only about 12 minutes. He scored 11 points in his first pre-Olympic tuneup, and China won 96-72. Yao shot 7-of-10 from the free throw line and grabbed four rebounds.

What do the digits 25, 35 and 82 have in common? They were all part of China news this week, as journalists, businessmen and government officials counted out and ranked up different individuals and groups related to the PRC. In ascending order:

• Forbes announced China's 25 Most Powerful Celebrities, with the number one spot going to basketball star Yao Ming. To create the ranking, Forbes looked not only at income (Yao brought in 388 million RMB in 2007) but also at celebrity status, measured by examining appearances on print, television and internet media. The 25 include athletes, film stars and media personalities, with Liu Xiang, Jet Li and Yi Jianlian coming in behind Yao as top scorers.
• Thursday's Fortune 500 list brought good news for Chinese companies, 35 of which made it to the top tier of global business, the largest-ever representation for China. Oil refinery Sinopec led the group in 16th place, followed by 25 other mainland companies, three from Hong Kong and six from Taiwan. Oil and energy groups as well as banks made up a big chunk of the big winners, and 19 were government-controlled corporations.
• Earlier this week we reported on the situation with Uygers in Xinjiang, brought into public view after police killed five Muslims in Urumqi who were allegedly planning a “holy war” and Olympic terrorism, but were armed only with knives. The incident comes into sharper perspective following the government’s announcement that it has detained 82 suspected terrorists in the northwest this year, on charges of plans to attack the Beijing Olympics. While exiled Xinjiang Uygurs denied the claim, Urumqi police chief Chen Zhuangwei was adamant that the threat was serious, adding that 41 illegal places of worship had been shut down in the province because they were headquarters for terrorist activity.
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