Yao Ming is an incredible specimen that had a brilliant but short career in the NBA. According to a new book, Operation Yao Ming, by former Newsweek journalist Brook Larmer, Yao Ming ending up playing basketball was no accident.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported the following:
“Yao on one hand is this great symbol of China’s modern advancement, a commercial icon that can stride across the Pacific and play the role of a bridge between East and West,” he said. “But he’s still the product of this system which is one of the last bastions of socialism in China.”
Larmer says Yao’s birth had been anticipated for decades by communist officials – desperate to boost national pride through sports – who had been tracking his family for two generations.
He describes a system where doctors armed with special growth-predicting manuals measure youngsters’ bones and pubic hair to identify future athletes. Weightlifters must be squat with strong torsos; divers need tiny hips to minimise splash; basketball players must simply be tall.
“It’s no accident that there have been generations of players who have continued to get taller,” he said. “One of the first NBA scouts was blown away when he went to northern China and saw more than 20 seven-footers [213cm].”
Yao’s grandfather, one of Shanghai’s tallest men, was discovered too late for basketball but his son, the 205cm Yao Zhiyuan, soon found himself dragged into the sports system.
There he was paired off with the 182cm Fang Fengdi, China’s women’s captain who had been a feared Red Guard during the murderous Cultural Revolution.
The two were encouraged to marry in a system with undertones of eugenics, the controversial gene-pool manipulation espoused by the Nazis and previously trumpeted by Beijing.
“It wasn’t a national breeding program, it was a desire among Shanghai officials for them to get together,” Larmer said. “But when Yao was born, everybody in the sports community in Shanghai and nationally knew he was something special.”
There you have it, Yao Ming may have been literally born to play basketball.