Yao Ming on his hypertension incident

dharocks · Sep 7, 2003

Here's an article by Yu Wei of the official Yao Ming website, as translated by sinobball of the ************ bbs. Just in case anyone's interested.

September 3
Author: Yu Wei
Yaoming.net
Translated by sinobball

I’m happy that there’s no news of Yao Ming these days. To Yao Ming himself and the ones who love him, it’s almost like “No news is the best news.”

But the BBS people are really agitated, they all want some news on Yao Ming! So I called Yao Ming at noon.

What do we talk about? Since his days are fine, let’s talk about his feeling in the “hypertension incident”, this is Yao Ming’s idea.

Yao Ming had just finished practice and lunch, and is probably a little lazy. His first words were: “Actually I wasn’t nervous at all in the beginning”. The words “not nervous at all” has pretty much described Yao’s whole story. Compared to the other people who got nervous to death, Yao Ming looked like a bystander.

“At first I felt very curious, because you know that hypertension is a ‘rich disease’. (Note: Because poor Chinese people usually couldn’t afford a lot of fat and salt like Americans)”, Yao Ming said, “But on the other hand, I felt to get a ‘rich disease’ at this age, is probably too early.”

I said, “Everyone else was nervous to death, and you were feeling curious.” But Yao Ming educated me: “You don’t know but this thing is like playing a game. You, the player on the court, is not nervous at all, but everyone else is nervous to death.” I couldn’t debate Yao Ming’s explanation, after all he’s more familiar with playing games, and he’s more familiar with the reason that this young man less than 23 years old could have such postitive mentality after this “hypertension incident”.

Speaking of the days of the “hypertension incident”, Yao Ming revealed a yearning in his voice. “Before when we practiced, we ran laps under the hot sun, sweating, and some other team coaches just stood under the tree shade, they were extremely comfortable. At that time I felt, maybe the most comfortable thing is not lying on the bed listening to music, but standing under the tree shade holding a stopwatch, watching other people running in laps. This time when my training time was cut short due to hypertension, I felt a little this way.” Yao Ming didn’t conceal his feelings of small gloating, although his pleasure was his own and so was his misfortune.

I said, “I’m probably not going to write down the words you just said, because other people would think you’re slacking off.” He said, “What’s there to be afraid of, I’m not a slacker at practice anyway, as of resting, I think it’s okay to think about it.”

Indeed, Yao Ming’s “resting” is probably thought about, and his high blood pressure fell quickly after more organized daily routines and pure vegetarian eating. In the final health check, Yao Ming’s heart, brain and kidneys are all normal, this relieved Yao Ming’s worries, and it also announced the end of the “good days” of Yao Ming.

Yao Ming said: “Later, every time when Old Du (Note: Dr. Du, the team doctor) came in and measured my blood pressure, I always hoped my blood pressure to be slightly higher, because I would benefit from (less) training. However, my hope always disappoints.” Yao Ming said these words with a tone of playfulness. But he followed with a summary: “Actually people are like that. If you rest one day, than you want to rest the following day, all people have lazy tendencies.” Because we all know that everyone has lazy tendencies, we’re not worried about his laziness, because we all know the seriousness he put into his practice.

Because even in the “hypertension incident”, Yao Ming still didn’t rest completely, the only difference between “hypertension life” and normal life is probably the 3 meals per day. Although Yao Ming claimed to be a meat-lover, he still remembered firmly the green vegetables that have spent those days with him: spinach, lettuce, and stir-fry Chinese cabbage. These three are properly called the “3 friends” in Yao Ming’s sickness. He also remembered vividly spinach roots---he likes that, although it’s not usually present in dishes.

As of hypertension, there’s another saying by Yao Ming that I admire: “This thing is like SARS, if you cover it up and let nobody knows, it will worsen unimaginably. So when you face it, and solve it, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
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Yao Ming on his hypertension incident

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