Funny Read " Yao's Chick "

Interesting. I read it all.......if the medal is real gold, I'll take it.

So, this girl is really Yao's girlfriend now? If this story is true, it's interesting for sure. There has to be another part.....BRING IT!

 

If I was told that I only had one week to live, I would read that entire thing because that way it would feel that I actually had several years left to live instead of a week.

 

Just wondering did you write that yourself? It obviously can't be real cause it's a well known publicized fact that Yao already has a girlfriend as shown by that wrist band he wears. Therefore, a lot of the story doesn't seem plausible.

 

It's longer than War and Peace.

 

I think Max Apple is a secret name for MacBeth .

 

"Yao's chick" probably likes that picture...

 

I have read the whole thing. It really is a cynical piece.

Of course when the writer used the title "Yao's chick" he didn't really mean it. The chick just happened to be an ordinary tall girl who could not find a husband thus had fantasies about Yao...

SS999

 

I read the whole thing Lionheart and don't need a medal. I thought it was pretty good.

I'm the son of Chinese immigrants who came to Houston in the late 60's and I liked how the story dealt with the immigrants family trying to adjust to life in the US. I found the part about how much desire the father had to try to succeed because of what happened in Vietnam to be particulary good and very true of many immigrants.

Unfortunately this is a sports forum so I'm not surprised by some of the less sophisticated comments that have been posted. but I hope they haven't gotten you down.

FYI, have you thought about submitting this peace to some of the Asian American arts journals? I live in Minnesota now and even though we have a small Asian American community compared to Houston there still is an Asian American Arts journal published. I'm sure a quick search on Google should identify ones in Houston.

 

I promised Lionheart last night I'd point out to him why this story is obviously fake/made up. I did not want to comment on it last night because by then I had only read about 50 lines therefore did not want to say anything until I was done. So I sat down this morning with 2 cups of coffee and read the whole thing. I still stand by my original opinion that this is crap. I'll point out the most obvious reasons, anybody else, feel free to dig more yourself.

1. This article is obvious written during 2002/2003 because Yao is playing for the Rockets. Subtract the 27 years ago (which the article stated he escaped from Saigon), that will be about '76. Does anybody find anything wrong with this statement? A Chinese gymnast living in Commie Vietnam that had his gym torched. That's funny, Vietnam's gymnastics program was virtually non-existant. Actually I take it back, it WAS non-existant. They plain didn't have a gymnastics program.

2. Instead of fleeing to China, which sad to say, has a far superior gymnastics program compared to US, they got on a leaky boat and made their way to America. '76 would be around the time China got pissed off about Vietnam so they would have been welcomed.

3. How did they find their way to Texas? Despite obviously enjoying the company of Chinese and their traditions therefore living in a major Chinese center like NY or San Fran, they found their way to Texas. Let's see, they got on their boat at Saigon, then they either

a) crossed the Pacific which would put them smack in LA/San Fran (which is far more likely they have stayed).

b) Went through the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, snuck through the Suez Canal (which requires a pass), through the entire Mediterranean, survived through the Atlantic which would likely put them on the east coast (NY being the most popular location)

Both route would require them to travel large expanses of water in a leaky boat, to get to... Texas?

4. Her mother was SOOOOOOOOOOO busy preventing her dad from drowning himself in the Gulf of Thailand that both their pants came off and they made a kid. But then again, I guess if you're crossing the Pacific or the Atlantic on a leaky boat, you have a lot of time.

5. Last time I checked, 3 was not a bad number to the Chinese people. 4 is a bad number, 3 is neither good nor bad.

6. In Chinese tradition, people plain did not believe in card readers.

7. Every girl just tell their secret crush to reporters when they wouldn't tell their mothers. Obviously that Li En was confident enough to tell Max Apple what she was thinking when she's embarrassed telling her own mom.

There are many others which I won't bother pointing out. You can look for them yourselves. I think that once upon a time in Texas, a reporter named Max Apple twiddled his thumb to think of something that will make him rich/famous/controversial/whatever. So he said to himself, what's BIG (pun intended) in Texas right now. So he tried to ride Yao's jock to success, wrote a fictional article (aka, crap), and took a cheap shot at the Commies (taking all of Yao's salary, Burnt gym, blah blah) while he's at it. Everybody's happy. End of story.

DISCLAIMER: MFW2310 is not a commie. This post does not reflect any political beliefs. It serves rather, to point out the obvious fallacies of this article, as well as to demonstrate to people that they should take everything they read with a grain of salt. This post express opinions, non political at that and is not intended to stoke, flame nor incite any feelings, political or not. The purpose of this post can therefore be summarized as for entertainment purposes only.

 

DAMN thats alot of reading!

 

I never considered this story to be real and whether real or not it didn't stop me from finding it an interesting read. Personally I believe that Lionheart or Max Apple made it up and as such I think its a decent piece of short fiction.

Regarding some of your points debunking the story I would like to point out a few things to debunk your debunking:

The timeline works. Saigon fell in 1975 but many boat people (Vietnamese refugees who fled by sea) didn't make it out right away or spent years bouncing around refugee camps or on the sea so if the story is set in the past two years it is very likely that the main character could've been conceived under those conditions.

As for the father's attitude towards Communist that's not surprising since many Vietnamese refugees of that time were supporters of South Vietnam and hated the NVA army. Its ludicrous to think that anti-Communists would've considered going the country that was just coming out of the madness of Cultural Revolution. Anyway the PRC had no interest in taking refugees and wouldn't have allowed them in even if they wanted to.

As for a gymnastics tradition the PRC had no competitive western gymnastic tradition until they entered the Olympics in 1984. From the story it sounds like the father was teaching Olympic style gymnastics and not traditional Chinese gymnastics.

Regarding that Chinese have no interest in card readers that is true because Tarot cards are not Chinese but they do have a big interest in fortune tellers or Feng Shui men. Just go to any major Chinatown and you're bound to find a few. Even now in Hong Kong and throughout Asia Feng Shui men are often consulted for everything from lottery advice to million $ business deals.

Finally, I don't know if you live in Houston but Houston has a huge Vietnamese and Chinese community with the Vietnamese community made up primarily of Southern Vietnamese who fled when the North took over. They didn't settle in Houston because they decide to take the long way from Asia but were resettled by the US Gov. along the Gulf Coast because many were shrimp fisherman. Vietnamese in other fields who followed the refugees to new communites. For instance the Cowboys linebacker Dat Nguyen is the son of Vietnamese refugees who grew up on Galveston Bay. It seems perfectly rational that a Chinese-Vietnamese family would move to Houston which has large communities of both.

FYI, incase you are wondering there are many Vietnamese who are ethinically Chinese and who follow Chinese traditions and speak Mandarin.

So while I believe this is a work of fiction I don't find the points you try to debunk it on to be very plausible.

 

Exactly. His supposedly point by point debunking is so flawed it's funny. I never took the story as being real either, but the points he tried to make were real funny.
I'm Vietnamese and my family escaped by boat. We got picked up by a US Destroyer and taken to Guam. After that we went to stay in a refugee camp in Pennsylvania. We stayed there 6 months when they asked us where we would like to be re-located. My parents wanted to go to a place where the climate was similar to Vietnam. So we came to Houston. I've got about 50 relatives in Houston. It's a huge community. To say that it's unlikely a refugee from Vietnam would come to Texas instead of California is assuming we're flying in to San Francisco Airport or something.
As said above, China at the time refused entry from Vietnam war refugees. They had some camps they put together for people who landed on their shores, but they were very harsh.
And also, most of the Chinese who lived in Vietnam (there are roughly 1 million ethnic Chinese who do) came from Southern China and mainly speak Cantonese, not Mandarin. Some of them don't even speak Vietnamese because they had such a tight community they didn't even need to. Kind of like some of the Chinese in NY Chinatown.

 

I will respond to both you and Yonkers in the same post.

1. Yes China DID have what you called competitive Olympic gymnastics competition in '76. Look it up in history. Just because China did not participate in the Olympics until '84 doesn't mean they weren't into sports. Heck, China certainly didn't suddenly decide to start playing basketball in '84.

2. I do know that Houston has a large Chinese/Vietnamese population. I also know that this Chinese/Vietnamese community was NOT as big in '76. I also know that NY and San Fran has and had much bigger ones. Basically all I'm pointing out is that the likelyhood of them ending up in Texas when fleeing as refugees are not high. Considering that only 1 in 10 of them end up in Texas. Hey, if I was fleeing commies in a leaky boat, I certainly wouldn't grab my French furniture, my Swiss bank account and my gold bulions in my basement. I'd take some cloth, food, some lightweight finance (paper money, jewellry, etc) then land in the first suitable community (in this case, NY) where I can find help and friendship.

3. Fortune telling is popular among overseas Chinese communties, I was merely pointing out that they don't believe card reading.

Basically I don't know why you are hounding me over this post. I asked Lionheart in the game chat last night where did he find the article, he said from someone who he believed as a credible source. I also asked if he believed it to be real, which he said yes. So when I pointed that it is not he asked me to point out why, which I did here.

I am one of those people that believes in journalistic integrity, meaning that if Max Apple wants to write an article about Chinese traditions (a politically charge one at that), then Max Apple needs to do some research. Post this article on say a Chinese site and it will quickly become a flame post.

As for Yonkers, if you find me "funny" then middle finger to you. Since my original post was not meant for you any ways, feel free not to read my posts in the future.

Btw, in my haste I forgot to mention, in neither of the 2 seasons that Yao has been here did the Rockets beat the Wolves 101 - 97. So if there are still any doubts about the legitimacy of this article for you Yonkers, here's the proof.

 

Im in college and i dont do that much reading.

 

So guys...how 'bout them Rockets?

 

That was kind of a strange, but interesting story. Belongs more in the Hangout, I'd guess though.

Man, romantic fansubs about the rockets - guess I've seen everything now.