Here, it's even possible to discover an
NBA top center. In the "if
you build it, they will come" atmosphere of modern
Shanghai, Yao's
success story doesn't seem far-fetched at all. After all,
basketball is what he was born to do. His father, six-foot-seven
Yao Zhi Yuan, played for the Shanghai city team; his six-foot-three
mother, Fang Feng Di, stood out on the Chinese national basketball
team. At age nine, Yao entered the after-school
basketball program
at Xuhui District Sports School and began the lifelong training
that would lead him to the Shanghai Sharks, the Chinese national
team, the NBA, and superstardom.
Yao hasn't spent very much time in Shanghai the past five years.
After the Rockets chose him as the number-one pick in the 2002 NBA
draft, Yao and his parents moved to the suburbs of
Houston. Even
so, Yao looms large in Shanghai. His face appears on every
McDonald's bag; on enormous billboards along Nanjing Road
(Shanghai's equivalent of Fifth Avenue); and, on a nearly daily
basis, in the Shanghai newspapers, which faithfully report on the
Rockets. The city cheered when he was named the Western Conference
Player of the Month last November. And in December, when Yao
fractured his tibia, the collective intake of breath across
Shanghai was sharp enough to cut glass. Although few of the city's
16 million know Yao personally, to all of them, he is Shanghai's
favorite son.
And a dutiful one. Every summer, when the basketball season ends,
Yao returns to Shanghai. When he came home after his rookie year,
in May 2003, Shanghai was in the middle of the SARS crisis. Yao put
together a telethon that raised $300,000 in relief. A year later,
he accepted the position of global ambassador for the 2007 Special
Olympics World Summer Games, which Shanghai will host this October.
And then, of course, there's his role as Shanghai's image
ambassador in the promo films for the city. We'll now add tour
guide to Countless
Yao Ming's list of professions as he takes us
through Shanghai.