http://www.asiapundit.com/2005/12/ming_dynasty_va.html ming dynasty vase Tyler Cohen reviews Brent Larmer's book on China's most famous basketball player and concludes that, due to politics, Yao Ming is not a great player.: ...the Shanghai coaching staff in fact protected Yao as if he were a priceless Ming-dynasty vase. During most of his first two years at Meilong, the fragile recruit only joined the vets of the junior team for the low-impact shooting and dribbling exercises. Once the practices moved into fast-paced drills or full-contact scrimmages, coaches pulled him off the court..."...we gave him lighter workouts to slowly build up the strength of his heart and lungs." I had not realized that Yao has been prodded, tested, measured, and virtually controlled since his childhood. There is more: In Yao, Wei had found the ultimate guinea pig on whom to test his theories about human growth and athletic performance...The rumpled researcher tried to accelerate the usually unhurried processes of traditional Chinese medicine...If those who helped engineer Yao's growth were proud of the way they harnessed traditional Chinese medicine, they showed reluctance to discuss a much more sensitive issue: rumors of the use of human-growth hormones... Wei claims to have made Yao several inches taller, while noting, perhaps correctly, that his secret concoctions "would pass any NBA drug test." That is all from Brook Larmer's fascinating Operation Yao Ming: The Chinese Sports Empire, American Big Business, and the Making of an NBA Superstar. If you want to know where China is headed over the next twenty years, this book is one of the better places to start. ========================================================== Operation Yao Ming: The Chinese Sports Empire, American Big Business, and the Making of an NBA Superstar (Hardcover) by Brook Larmer Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly The 7'5" Yao Ming didn't get where he is today because of some lucky genes and a good three-point shot. Everything about him, from birth to first endorsement deal, was planned by a confluence of government and business interests intent on creating a superstar. Basketball has been popular in China since the late 19th century, so a government with a Soviet-style, militaristic sports system intent on creating world-class athletes thought little of mating its tallest athletes in an attempt to pass on their genes. Thus in 1980, Yao was born to the tallest couple in China, the result of matchmaking that carried with it the dark shadow of eugenics. From there, a government campaign worked to turn "a boy with an ideal genetic makeup into the best basketball player in Chinese history," writes Larmer, and it wasn't long before Nike and the NBA had their hooks in him. Larmer, Newsweek's former Shanghai bureau chief, crafts his narrative well, explaining the byzantine interests competing for their pound of Yao's flesh with admirable simplicity. Yao's story is so controlled that when he finally overcomes his initial clumsiness and starts rebelling against his government at book's end, it's hard not to feel empathy for the gentle giant. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Larmer, former Newsweek bureau chief in Shanghai (and Buenos Aires, Miami, and Hong Kong), traces the development and emergence of Yao Ming as China's first bona fide NBA star, from the arranged marriage of his parents--both reluctant but sensational, and tall, basketball players in China--to his care and feeding as a youth by PRC sports officials, to Nike's savvy insinuation into Yao's career and into mainstream Chinese culture in the mid-1990s, to his number-one selection in the 2002 NBA draft. Not coincidentally, Yao's story here reflects the seismic shifts taking place in Chinese sports, post-1949; it starts with a country virtually invisible in the global arena that becomes, by the time of Yao's emergence, an international power not embarrassed to flex its muscle. If Larmer's account succeeds in contextualing Yao in the high-octane world of the NBA, it also succeeds in revealing one aspect of China's more fundamental struggle with its socioeconomic identity in the world today. Alan Moores Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Is that even a real article? I googled 'Brent Larmer and Yao' and the only result returned is that webpage. If there is really a 'Brent Larmer' who has written a book about Yao, I suppose there would be more information about it on the net.
Thank you. The name of the author is Brook Larmer. They said Brent Larmer in the article. That's why google couldn't find anything.
Interesting, and believable, but that doesn't mean I believe it. Even so, I like Yao and wish him well. I don't consider Yao as representing the Chinese govt. Anyway, when I first heard of Yao, my first thought was, 'dang'ol, how is a Chinese man THAT big?'.....I had my doubts and thoughts about genetic engineering, and the Chinese govt, and the money that China would make of off him, but once I got to learn about Yao, and the more I observed him, I forgot about all that and enjoyed him as a good guy and a good player. He's what got me back into watching basketball. I was a fan in Hakeem's day, when they made some noise with those championship years, but basketball fell off my radar until Yao emerged.
This book revealed some western writer's ignorance. It may be due to the culture difference or political intent. China was not a realy socialist or communist country before 80's of last century because of its history tradition, and now it is a completely capitalist country. Because of the tradition every Chinese parent want their child to be better than others in education or other special training such as sports, arts and musics. Yao's parent may send him for basketball training when he was still a child because Yao was tall in elementary school and his parent were former national basketball player. It is impossible to let other peoples to do any drug test for heightening him. Anyway, I enjoy these well-meaning ignorance when I first came to U.S. and an official thought Shanghai is a country not a city, but I don't like the baleful ignorance.
That's why the Chinese government is so evil. They also campaigned to enforece the one-child policy on the couple so that they wouldn't produce a dozen Yao Ming to cause the devaluation of the vase!
It's scary that some people might totally believe it. Come On!! America !!!!!! And when can these stupid writers stfu !?? I thought the world is improving.
They have wasted some of the hormones on Yao's head. Why didn't they use it on his upper body instead? Yao doesn't need such a big head to play basketball.
LOL funny article When people don't understand something, they are afraid of it, and then try to explain it.
