Found this translated article on yao elswhere. Maybe we can get a better translation from others here http://sports.sohu.com/00/02/news206860200.shtml I have read the article in Chinese, but still have great trouble in understanding the translation. But still thanks for trying. As Chinese people would say, " At least You have tried, even though in vain." ( Mei You Gong Lao Ye You Ku Lao!) Here is the summary: Yao's hometown is a small town near Shanghai. People there tend to be fair-skinned and short. But Yao's paternal family, which has been a unique phenomenon on the town for hundreds of years, has produced a lot of giants, including his grandfather who is 6-9 and his uncle who is 6-5. When Yao was born, he weighted about 12 pounds, which was very unusual. He was a good student at school, well disciplined, hard-working, and never made any trouble. His biggest dream as a kid was to become the "flag-raiser" at school, which was then a big honor awarded to the best students. But he never made it and he still regrets it! According to his teachers, he was very quiet ,even timid, and super nice to his classmates. He was not assertive and didn't like to "express himself". He never took advantage of his size to bully other kids. On the contrary, he was often bullied but he was so good natured that he never got exasperated and fought back. He even didn't turn in those bad kids to the teachers despite their promise to punish. Though his parents were star players on the national teams, they earned the salary of ordinary people. (about six dollars per month per person in the early eighties. But this is not THAT horrible like some of you who don't know China of the eighties would think. My parents who were university-educated engineers earned about that much at that time). But since Yao ate much more than an average kid the family suffered from tight budget. So they sent him to a sport training school, where Yao could be privileged with a glass of milk every day. (According to the reporter, this is the major reason behind Yao's parents' decision to send him to the sport school, but man, I don't believe it! Of course the couple expected their only son to be a star one day). Also Yao's mother had to make a new sweater for Yao every month who was growing like crazy and the family couldn't afford to buy factory made clothes! At first Yao didn't have a passion for basketball. What had caught his fancy were the following in the time sequence: toy guns, books (especially on geography), archaeology, computer games. To him basketball was just another game. He also lacked the strength. According to his first coach, his heart and lung were not strong enough, either. but he was a very obedient boy and listened to his coach and finished the training program in a very admirable way. As a result, he improved dramatically. With time passing, he got more and more famous and his family got relieved from the finally benefit. Once he asked his parents," would you please dress a little bit better when you come to the arena?" He asked the question in the most shy way. Although his parents agreed with him after a long and painful meditation, Yao soon realized how much he must have hurt his parents so he wrote them a letter to apologize. The content was roughly like this:" I should not have tried to use your appearances to satisfy my petit vanity. On the contrary, I should work harder to make you smile more. I am sorry, pleae forgive me. You don't have to worry about your clothes any more." Yao's parents can't find the letter now but they remember the words very well
A lot of details in the story is invented. But anyway, interesting to read. I think maybe the articles of 5 yrs ago about the childhood of Yao is more credit (who can find it? surely should have in the old newspaper). Now with the emergency of Big Yao, a lot of story became too legendy to believe.
i'm beginning to believe that none of the chinese articles have any truth to them. one of them said yao became 7'6 after doing this special exercise every morning. bull$hit. if that was the case, i could grow from 6 foot to 7'6 and be dunking over shaq in no time. these articles are full of bs. mythical legends that have no truth to them. basically creative writing.
Yao getting bullied when he was young? I dunno... are they trying to give him some "street crediblity"?
mingyao:- They are not! They are telling you that he was non violent and in contol of himself, also respecting his relationship of thoes causing him harm. If this article is true, it would indicate that he has an ideal character for team sports.
I believe in almost every detail of the story. Yao Ming is a typical Chinese good guy, growing up from a good boy. There is nothing worth being invented, or favricated in the story. Good read, and it makes me more proud of him.
I am not sure every bit of detail is true, but it is certainly not far from the fact. I am a bit older than Yao and was also raised in mainland China. In early 80's, both of my parents made around RMB30 ($4 with current exchange rate, could be as much as $10 in the old days though) as a pharmacist. The family, which included my elder brother, spent around 75% of family income on the food (Accomodation was usually free of charge at that time). Yet we couldn't afford good food at all. 80's China was really poor and there's no doubt Yao's family couldn't fill such a little giant well. That being said, I believed Yao's parents wanted their kid to be a great basketball player too.
I left beijing for the US in 1985 and i was around 5-7 yrs old in the early 80's and my parents had typical jobs. I don't remember this not having enough food crap... One thing for you US folks, chinese people like to be melodramatic and poetic about alot of stuff, especially when it comes to family values. This article doesn't surprise me in the least bit, but i'm pretty sure alot of details are exaggerated...
ok, now you're exaggerating. chinese people ARE NOT melodramatic or poetic. and i don't know what the he!! you're talking about? speak for yourself not for everybody else. the not having enough food can be true, how else do you explain how skinny most chinese are? ever wonder why most chinese eat mostly vegetables in their diet? cause meat cost too much dummy. i know my father came into the US and got fat cause he had never seen so much food and variety. journalists however probably are extra poetic and creative with their writing. since they probably have nothing to write about. what i find most hard to believe in the chinese newspapers is that they actually quoted somebody saying yao did some stupid exercise to get taller and become 7'6. what i question is their sources. their writers are probably writing the truth. but their sources are making up ****.
to the guy who left beijing in the 80's and doesn't remember famine. you also fail to remember that beijing is the showpiece of the communist party. as my wife (mainland chinese, grew up in the 70s and 80s) says, 'the rest of china might starve, but beijingers will never go hungry'.
what some people tend to do when they describe china is that they describe only the place they came from. if a person came from shanghai or beijing, they'd probably say china is so modern because both of those are cities. also shanghai has become the most popular city in china. i heard they were planning on building the tallest building in the world there. businesses are all trying to set up in shanghai. but just a little farther from shanghai, there's also a village that's suffering from a AIDS epidemic where dirty needles spread the virus and infected damn near the entire village. since the people in the village were poor, they were selling their blood to the hospital or something and in the process got the virus from a dirty needle. famine is not uncommon in some areas. while people in beijing get fat, another part of china starves. people who live in cities in china tend to forget the rest of china. but now, there are more cities that are modernized than before. and people who were starving and skinny are now getting fatter. in fact, one of the main concerns people had when mcdonalds came to china was that people were going to get fat. before in the 80's, if you went to certain parts of china and you were fat. people would stare at you cause they'd never seen a fat person before.
i'm sure there are people starving in rural villages, etc, but doesnt Yao come from Shanghai? And that's the first time I've heard the "beijingers will never starve..." quote... hehe guess I got lucky!
by uac that's not inside info. its in the US news, british news, and chinese news about the aids epidemic in some rural villages and some other areas where there is high drug use. but those problems are not widespread. if you don't believe me, do a search on aids epidemic in china, i think you'll find plenty of info on that. most of CHINA is modern and getting better. have i ever been to china? YES and to many different parts of china unlike some people here. i've been to hong kong and that's one of the most modern cities in china, very clean, but very polluted air. hard to breathe there. i've also been to beijing and many other areas and i've been to the poorer areas since i visited my grandfather's grave when i was 6 and that's a rural part. needless to say i prefer the city areas of china. also my brother is currently on vacation in china and he tells me its improved so much. even the place we came from which was poorer before is so much more improved. it's like a bigger version of new york now.
I thought the story was quite believeable. I think most of the mainland Chinese would think so too. Kids in Shanghai are notoriously mean. It was tough to be a well behaved, good honest kid growing up in Shanghai, as Yao seems to be. Food was a big concern in China those days. While starvation was not a big threat in most of China by then, the food was still not much either in quantity or quality. China used a food rationing system until the early 90s. Bottled milk was considered affordable but fairly expensive in Shanghai. There are a lot of things that seem to be absolutedly delicious back then would not be so great to me now. Some are even downright disgusting, like SPAM and hams for example. For those people who didn't have a tough time in China back in the 80s or who never lived in China, good for you. That doesn't mean the article about Yao is not true though.
It was a good read if we believe the translation... I would also tend to agree with Yao's timid nature and up bringing... This will have to change so he can become more aggressive...
A lot of people with too little knowledge about China tryin' to throw in their two cents... might as well join the group. I lived in China in the '80s, and I agree that there was no 'famine'. But the story on Yao never suggested that there was. I agree absolutely that it's perfectly realistic on this point of view. - Yao Ming loved meat, a part of the diet that would've been very hard to afford. - Yao Ming obviously could use dairy milk in his diet, which was basically unavailable to the vast majority of urban Chinese. I didn't grow up any, drinkin' almost exclusively soy milk. - Yao's mother made 40 yuan a month as captain of the Chinese national team, a perfectly believeable number. All of these reasons make it perfectly understandable why their parents would send Yao to athletic school. There was no question of Yao Ming starving to death, it's just a matter of providing the best nutrition possible. He would not have received that at home. The average height of kids in China has grown dramatically from 1985 to 1995, as nutrition improved. There was most definitely widespread malnutrition in the '80s... which doesn't mean we should imagine images of starving Ethiopian children, but does mean that children raised before the '90s are shorter and weaker than they could have been with a full diet.
Oh! It is a known problem among medicine community especially people who interested in AIDS. It was reported that villagers had sold their plasma to the illegal blood bank. However, they used poor technique by taking the pool of whole blood from different peoples, extracted out the plasma then give the mixed red blood cell back to people. That is how the whole village got HIV infection because they recived back the mixed HIV contaminated red blood cell. The Chinese government estimate that about 30,000-50,000 people had been infected while selling blood product. Here is the link of the article if you are interested .http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7315/714e Anyway, This does not mean that China is a poor country. I think that the government have been trying to distribute the development into every part of the country. Considering the large population, it will take time. PS: I do not think that this information is related to the Houston Rocket. But since you ask..
