I too found the two paragraphs you cited disturbing. I'd say most of the things he wrote about the China and Chinese sports are pretty accurate -- the part on the Cultural Revolution especially brings back the vivid memories of those tumultuous years. But the implication that Chinese sports machine purportedly cultivated genetically superior offsprings of gifted athletes by systematically arranging marriages of such on behalf of CCP is awfully ridiculous. You have to admit conspiracy theory has its appeal.
this article obviously BS. the guy is exaggerating to the fullest. this article should be listed under fiction.
AGREE. The article implied Fang and Yao are forced to get married, especially by political force. It is just BS.
I think SI sensationalized that bit. Given the context of where the two were in that environment where a 6-foot plus national athlete had dedicated almost her whole life to the national team you can also understand how people around her may have tried hard to set her up with a life partner with similar interests. To leave open the suggestion that they were coerced into some kind of genetic experiment to produce a future generation of superatheletes is borderline irresponsible. One potentially worrisome aspect is how Yao and his family will take this article. I can't imagine it being anything but insulting and hurtful. I'm sure being a multimillionaire helps numb the sting but to have your parents' privacy and dignity splattered all over the news must be a massive shock and repulsive.
You are right. It is just irresponsible to say that. Maybe they also want to say Yao and his girlfriend Ye Li are also a setup and a conspiracy of Chinese government to make Yao Generation II.
I'm concerned about this also. Suffice to say Yao won't be giving SI any interviews. He will probably come out and publicly deny there is any truth to the article. There are two aspects here: 1 The forced marriage. This doesn't interest me personally. Pre-arranged marriages happen all over the world, though usually by family members and not by a government. 2 Yao's mother's past behavior and her relationship to Yao. This is what I find very intriguing and what I think Yao's family will find the most hurtful. When asked for specifics, I bet Yao's family vehemently denies #1. I'm curious if they even address #2.
I think the current generation of Chinese can not understand how it was back in the 1960s. I am sure it was a MUCH different and less free environment. I think that article is straight up truth. DD
I call this article Bullshiat I'll do more factcheck later on and post it here. "Operation Yao", give me a break!
I haven't seen anybody in this thread (the Chinese in particular) specifically said the portrait of the Cultural Revolution in the '60 of China is a distortion or misleading. What people object to is the notion of the "coerced mating" between Chinese sportsmen and sportswomen by CCP through "arranged marriages" for the purpose of producing more genetically superior athletes, as blatantly suggested by the author. The marriage between Yao Ming's parents, which occured in the 1979 (that's 3 years after the end of the Cultural Revolution), is best described by Quakes as a case in which "people around her [Yao's mom] may have tried hard to set her up with a life partner with similar interests." I hope this is not difficult to understand to the non-Chinese viewers.
You donot know what we are talking about. They get married in late 70s. NOT 1960s. I think you donot have a clue what the situation was and is in China. One of slogans CCP government widely used before and after 1949 is to promote freedom of marriage. There might be some forced marriage by parents but definitely not by the government. There are already many articles mentioned when yao was a child, some coach said he was not good in basketball and refuse to recruit him. If the article is true, how could it happen?
I was born in China in Cultural Revolution time. I feel this article gives such a true account of Chinese people's life in those days. Although I don't think the arranged marriage was meant to produce a super basketball player in the first place. Arranged marriage were so common in China at that time, and most Chinese feel the husband should at least be as tall as the wife, so it was very natural for Yao's parents to be 'arranged' together. It's a great article. It not only let me know something about Yao's familiy for the first time, but also reminds me of my own mother.
Yao's mom doesn't come off too well in this article, does she? That little blurb at the end doesn't negate the 2 pages of crap talked about her. I wonder what Yao's response would be?
What a piece of trash. The guy that wrote this should be shot. And government arranged marriages never occurred at anytime in Communist China. There were cases in which people working for the government introduced one mate to the other (and even in this capacity, they were NOT representing the wishes of the government), but no requirement was ever made that they had to marry. You only had to read the first two paragraphs to know this article is BS. And the average height of Shanghai men (yes, even Shanghai men) in 1980 was taller than 5'7.
