A Nation of Wusses

The pace in which structures get built in China is staggering. Xi'an markedly changed in the three and a half years I lived there. I would often leave the city for a few days, come back, and be amazed to see a new building erected or road paved in the time I was gone.

This following viral video (h/t @elliotng) really captures what I'm talking about. The video is of a hotel in Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan Province, being built in two days (literally):



This is an eye-opening video. It fits in nicely with a popular meme in the US right now: that the US is a "nation of wusses" and that China is "kicking our butts."

Last night, I hung out with Qian, my brother, and my roommate from college at our apartment. We watched the Sunday night NFL game of the week on a Tuesday night. The game in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between the Eagles and Vikings had been pushed from Sunday night to Tuesday night because of snow.

Pennsylvania's governor, Ed Rendell, had a lot to say about the NFL delaying a football game because of bad weather:

"My biggest beef is that this is part of what's happened in this country," Rendell said in an interview on 97.5 radio in Philly. "I think we've become wussies. ... We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down."

This is a rather bombastic statement from Rendell. My old roommate from college, who lives in DC, commented that Rendell is notorious in political circles for bloviating and loves to hear the sound of his own voice.

I don't think Rendell's words are all that accurate.

Chinese people often get very worked up about weather. From my experiences of living in the middle of the US and the middle of China, Americans are not wusses when it comes to weather and braving the elements. While I get what Rendell was going for, he's off base.

First, domestic sports leagues are just not that popular and don't hold the same value in Chinese society as they do in the US. There is no comparison in China for something like an NFL night game in Philadelphia. And second, Chinese people would not pay boat loads of money to voluntarily sit in mind-numbingly hostile conditions to watch sports. I don't see any city in China packing 60,000+ people into a stadium to watch a sporting event in a blizzard.

All that said, the rapid development in China and the US' economic sluggishness scares a lot of Americans. The video above is a beautiful portrait of what the US is envious of China for. We pride ourselves on being hardworking and industrious. Seeing a different country beat us at our own game (and Communist China of all places) stirs up great emotion. I sense nostalgia for the way things were in the US post-WWII both in the media and in daily interaction with family and friends. I think Rendell is grasping for those "good old days" when the US was the economic engine of the world in his comments from the other day.

Things have changed. I don't see those heady industrialist days ever coming back to the US. That's a difficult pill for many Americans to swallow. But even if those days are gone forever, I don't think the US is done for as a country or an economic powerhouse. Although frustratingly sluggish, the US economy continues to churn. We went close to the brink, but did not collapse. We, as a nation, need to adjust our priorities, expectations, and, most importantly, education system. Wusses we are not, though.

It All Began With the Netherlands

After the United States and China, the country I've spent the largest chunck of my life in is the Netherlands. When I was twenty years-old and in the first semester of my junior year at Saint Louis University, I spent four months studying abroad and living in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Today was a very happy day for me. For those that have tuned out of the World Cup, the Netherlands had a gutsy, impassioned semifinal victory over Uruguay, 3 - 2.



The Netherlands has a very special place in my heart.

Maastricht, the town where I lived in while studying abroad, is a town of about 120,000 people on the southern tip of the Netherlands. It is just a short bike ride from the border of Belgium. Maastricht is one of the oldest cities in the Netherlands with a history that dates back to the Roman Empire. In more recent history, it is where the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992. The Maastricht Treaty is the agreement that, for better or worse, created the Euro as a currency.

Partly due to its long history, Maastricht is largely a resort tourist town these days. The architecture is ancient (one neat fact about my life is that I've lived in two cities that have city walls: Maastricht and Xi'an). Most of the narrow streets are made of cobblestone. It is the hilliest place in the Netherlands. The Maas River running through the middle provides outdoor activities as well as vibrant night time scenes. And there are more than 300 pubs and 25 coffee shops (the, uh, Dutch kind) in the small hamlet.

Maastricht is, in my mind, one of the most beautiful places on Earth. It is an absolutely mind-blowing place for a twenty year-old college kid from middle America to live for a few months.

As weird as it sounds, my time in Maastricht is the one of the main reasons why I ended up going to and living in China for so long. Before studying in the Netherlands, I'd never been very international-thinking at all. Maybe it's because I am from land-locked Kansas. Maybe it was my fear of foreign languages (I never did well in Spanish). I don't know. But up until that point in my life, I never had an inkling that I'd want to spend a significant part of my life outside of the United States. That all changed after spending time in another culture and "seeing the world."

Life in Maastricht was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. On top all the gushing things I've said about Maastricht itself as a city, the town is in a perfect base of operations for seeing the rest of Europe. In my cushy study abroad program, we had three day weekends EVERY WEEKEND. It was ridiculous. In the middle of the semester, we had a ten day vacation as well. During all of my time off, I was able to visit something like twenty countries including Italy, Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic, the Balkans, and many more. My eyes were opened to so many new things.

While in the Netherlands, one of my best friends, Mikey, talked about teaching English in Japan after graduating from college. The more time I spent abroad, the more the idea started to resonate with me. I'd heard my mom mention a couple years before that Asia really needed native English teachers from western countries to go abroad to teach. When I heard her say that, I'd never considered doing such a thing. I didn't understand how a person could live in such a foreign place without being able to speak the language (at the time, I also, foolishly, thought Asian languages were impossible to learn). Going around Europe and living in a country that spoke another tongue changed my attitudes towards going abroad to Asia after graduating from college.

A year after studying abroad in the Netherlands during my senior year of college, I applied to teach English in Japan through the JET Program. The program was surprisingly competitive to get into. I made the first round of cuts, went to an interview at the Japanese consulate in Chicago, and was then wait-listed to the program. It turned out that I never was called and never had the chance to go to Japan through JET (just think, you could be reading "Mark's Japan Blog").

After some scrambling and looking at places like Taiwan and Chile, I ended up going to Kansas City's sister-city in China, Xi'an to satiate my itch to get outside of the United States. The next three and a half years of my life after that were spent in the Middle Kingdom. And today, even in America, China dominates my life.

So, that's my personal story with the Netherlands and how it changed my life. Well, almost all of it.

Even before studying abroad, I was a huge Netherlands football fan. It was largely based on their bright orange jersey. In 1998, I even splurged and bought the authentic, expensive-as-all-hell Nike Netherlands jersey:



It wasn't all about the jersey though. In addition to the sweet threads, that '98 Dutch team was a blast to watch. I still remember Patrick Kluivert, Edgar Davids, Edwin van der Sar, and others. That team, which made the semifinals and lost to Brazil, was a great team to support.

Ever since the '94 World Cup in America, I've been addicted to the World Cup. I've stayed up late or woken up early many times to watch games. (This year I've been blessed with an incredibly cool manager at work who has kids who played soccer and have been allowed to have the games on while we work on a computer that nobody uses. I've literally seen just about every minute of every single game of this Cup in Africa. It's been bliss.) Every year, the Netherlands has been my number two team after America (except for 2002 when the Dutch didn't qualify).

In 2006 while watching the Cup backpacking in southwest China with my South African friend, Joseph, I was particularly struck by one player - Dirk Kuyt. His energy and hustle stood out to me. His appearance also stands out too; a tall bleach-blonde Dutchman sprinting around is hard to miss:



After that 2006 World Cup, I got into the English Premier League via my friends from England while living in China. I figured out after a while that Kuyt plays for Liverpool. After seeing him on Liverpool, I embraced Liverpool as my team in the English Premier League.

Kuyt is still my favorite footballer in the world. I've told many an Englishman and people abroad that my Dirk Kuyt is my favorite player and he's the reason why I like Liverpool. They usually laugh at me and say that he's goofy and unskilled. Well, he's playing awesome this World Cup and his team is playing in the final! So haters be damned!

Sunday is going to be a great day. I can't wait to watch the Netherlands win the World Cup. The team and this run means a lot to me. Not only has it reminded me of my great times in the Netherlands and made my proud of my Dutch "heritage," but the Dutch have put on a wonderful display of football for the world.

Cultural Crossover - Basketball in China

My younger brother, David, is currently teaching English in Jinan, China. He's enjoying the life that all English teachers in China do: he's learning tons about a unique and constantly changing country, he's working at a largely pressure-free job, and he has plenty of days off to travel and do whatever he wants.

During some of that free time, David is undertaking an ambitious goal. As an outsider to Chinese culture and as a self-admitted sports nut, he is investing time in understanding the ethos of the Chinese basketball player and, on a larger scale, basketball's popularity in China. He is documenting his experiences on his new blog, the aptly named - Cultural Crossover.

Here's how David summarized his blog and his anthropologically-fueled pickup games on the courts of Jinan:

It’s a basketball nut/freelance journalist from Kansas spending months on end on the basketball courts of Jinan, China. I will play with Chinese basketball players who seem to have much of the same passion about the game that millions of Americans, myself included, have as well. I will use certain areas of expertise – namely basketball, writing and journalism – as tools to better understand what I feel is an underappreciated (or at least under-understood) phenomenon of basketball in China.

David graduated from college a couple years ago. He is an aspiring sports journalist. Given the economy, and especially the state of the journalism job market, David last year decided to side-step under-employment for a few months to see what he could find in China.

I've enjoyed reading his first few posts over at "Cultural Crossover." David isn't a "China hand" and doesn't claim to be. His perspective, a young guy from the mid-western United States where basketball is a pseudo-religion going to an unfamiliar basketball-crazy land on the other side of the world, is a unique one.

I'm going to highlight a lengthy selection from one of his first posts:

I hop on my bike at about 12:30 and make the 20-minute trek to Shandong Normal University. I make the left turn through the gates of the campus and I am greeted, as always, by a towering gold-colored statue of Mao Zedong, the former leader of China’s Communist Party who died in 1976. (Lest this site gets banned, that’s all I’ll say about him.) This statue, like so many others, shows Mao striking a waving-to-the-crowd pose that can easily be mistaken for a waving-down-a-taxi pose. His right arm is fully extended, his fingers outstretched. In front of Mao is a common area where, presumably, people can gather and hang out. But even though today will boast the best weather for the next week, it’s still kind of crummy outside. No one is gathered in front of Mao, and I cruise on past.

A minute later the basketball courts appear on my right, encased by an ugly-green iron fence with thin poles standing vertical every five inches. There is no one on the near courts behind the fence save one guy who is shooting by his lonesome. I ride another 50 yards until I reach the main entrance where, sure enough, I see some people playing. On one court there is a five-on-five half-court game, and on another there are five dudes just shooting around. There is only action of two of the 22 courts, but at least there is action. Actually, three courts are occupied: off in the distance, that lone guy is shooting by himself, over and over. I’m intrigued by his routine because it is one that I’ve done a million times. While I am gazing around, one of 20-somethings in the five-man cluster extends his right arm and waves me over, slightly reminiscent of the Mao statue. That settles it. I’m playing with them.

...

Playing conditions are spotty. The ball is overinflated and coated with dust; the court is pockmarked and dimpled: there is an obstacle course of small potholes and cancerous swells. I notice a few times that my foot hits the ground before it was supposed to, and look down to see a mound of concrete growing out of the pavement like a cyst. Other times the ground is a fraction of an inch lower than I anticipated, throwing me off-balance when my foot touches down. I feel my away around and learn to avoid the minefield that is the left baseline corner.

As one o’clock turns into 1:30, people start trickling onto the courts. Some more players – particularly tall ones, at that – conglomerate on the opposite baseline, watching the proceedings. Our game is interrupted when one of the players scurries to the sidelines to answer his cell phone. After a momentary pause – like he was being given a chance to end the call quickly – the guy who gave me the Mao wave does the same to the hoard of giants at the other end of the court. Six guys stroll over; four of them are taller than 6-foot-1, and three of them must be at least 6-4. If readers out there subscribe to the “All Chinese people are short” myth, I assure you that these guys dispel it. (OK, Chinese people do indeed tend to be shorter. But for the most part that is an exaggerated stereotype. Not everyone is Yao Ming, but it’s not a land of midgets.)

The spin-the-ball ritual is foregone, and the guy who keeps inviting people over drafts himself a team. He seems to be a leader of sorts, at least today. He selects himself, two of the best players from our three-on-three game and me. He either thinks I am good or thinks I am a novelty, and I don’t really care which; I just want to play.

Now, for as goofy as I may have looked with my shorts and cap, this “leader” takes the cake in my mind. He is wearing a tight long-sleeved purple shirt and tight dark-blue jeans, and his hair looks like a pinecone. The hair wrapping around the lower part of his scalp is resting at ease, but the hair on his crown is gelled to all hell. It is increasingly vertical as it nears the top of his head, propped up by some sort of hair product. I don’t know how much gel or spray he used, but I know that the hair atop his dome didn’t move an inch the whole day and that he was emanating the artificial, perfumey aroma of product from the opening tip. But whatever, dude could play.

After the tall guys stroll over there is an unstated sense that games are about to become more serious. Now it’s four-on-four, and now there are enough people on this end of the court to field three teams. Thus, if you’re team loses, you sit out. We start keeping score.

The first matchup is my team versus a squad that boasts two of the three tallest guys here, each of whom is better than 6-2. At 5-11, I am one of the taller people on my team. No matter, though, because we quickly race out to five points, which is the magic number. Each one of us notches at least one basket, and I can the winning shot on a turn-around fadeaway in the lane, a shot I practiced a million times by my lonesome during college.

The next group that comes out is totally overmatched. I hit jump shots on my first two touches and notice a palpable difference in my play. The moment we start keeping score, I am suddenly competitive: I am pissed when I miss and pretty stoked when I make it. My defense is better, my passes crisper. Keeping score is basically like two cups of coffee for my game: it sharpened me and got all hyped up.

We lose our third game against the giants who, now that they’re warmed up, start to assert themselves as the best team playing. Our team assumes a spot along baseline where all the losers wait for their chance to get back out there. I walk over to my backpack, which is about 15 feet away, to jot down a note in my Official Chinese Basketball Reporter Notebook. When I come back I am greeted by a teammate who is extending a pack of cigarettes, one of them invitingly jutting out of the pack. He is probably an inch shorter than me with – you won’t believe this – black hair and yellowish skin. He seems pretty fit, a fact revealed by his skin-tight t-shirt. Across the chest of the shirt it says “Calvin Klein” in glinty, diamond-sized studs. It’s the type of shirt that you would never see on a basketball court in the States because it might come off as, oh, a little fruity. What’s interesting, though, is that his below-waist attire is quintessential basketball: black mesh adidas sweats and some really slick black and red adidas basketball shoes. (My shoes, by the way, are black and red adidas basketball kicks. They’re sweet.)

He and his cig are staring at me, so I nod, say thank you and he lights me up. It’s not unusual to have someone offer me a cigarette and that is the climax of our interaction, the only thing we’re able to communicate. But it turns out this guy speaks a bit of English. He is 27 years-old, his name is Wang (with a short A sound) and he works for whoever it is that controls the city’s buses.

“Are you a driver?” I ask, guiding a fake steering wheel with my hands, one of which is holding a burning cigarette.

“No, no,” he says, taking a drag. “I work in office. I do the paper.”

I tell him that I’m a teacher and continue to probe just how well he knows English. I ask him how long he’s been playing basketball, and he tells me that he started in middle school but had to quit in high school because he “hurt this,” pointing to his lower-back. I ask about the NBA and which players he likes.

“The Chinese players – Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian,” he says with a smile, like he’s embarrassed at the predictability of this answer. “And James,” he adds, referring to LeBron James. “Superman!”

I laugh and agree. Indeed, LeBron is Superman.

Read this full article

You can read more of of David's writing over at his blog. It'll be fun to see what David learns on the courts in the coming months.

Yao Speaking Out on Sharks

I really like Yao Ming. This story makes me like him even more.

From AFP:

SHANGHAI — NBA star and Shanghai Sharks owner Yao Ming urged China on Friday to say no to shark fin soup to stop the overfishing of some species amid growing demand for the delicacy.

The Houston Rockets centre who recently bought his hometown's professional team, unveiled a television commercial aimed at wealthy Chinese which urges them to stop ordering shark fin soup.

"We have species that need our attention and protection," Yao told reporters at a press conference launching the campaign.

"They are endangered by excessive hunting by humans and deprived of habitats due to human greed."

The television advertisement produced for the San Francisco-based conservation group WildAid shows Yao pushing away a bowl of shark fin soup that is served to him in an upmarket restaurant.

"If you could see how shark fin is made, could you still eat it?" a voice asks as Yao looks at an aquarium in the dining room where a bleeding shark flails after its fin has been cut off.

Read On

Click here to see a graphic picture of what shark fins, ripped off of sharks, look like. Not too pretty.

I just did a search on youku.com for the video of this ad but couldn't find it. Oh well.

I never had shark's fin in China. Maybe this shows that I have never been REALLY wined and dined to a nice meal. I've eaten plenty of nice meals and banquets, but nothing as nice as having shark fin soup included.

Qian tells me that the cheapest shark fin soup costs about 100RMB (more than $10) for a tiny bowl. I remember seeing dried shark's fin in more upscale supermarkets in Xi'an (Walmart, Metro, etc.) for about 3000RMB (about $400) for a small box.

Although the article says that Chinese people believe eating shark fin is good for one's health, Qian tells me that, from her experience, Chinese people do not see any nutritional value in eating shark fin but instead eat it simply as a sign of status.

The article puts some startling numbers forward:

"Growing demand for shark fin -- driven mainly by Chinese consumers -- had caused populations of some shark species to collapse by as much as 99 percent, WildAid said."

To me, Yao Ming is tackling a noble topic trying to get wealthy Chinese people away from eating as much shark fin as they do.

NFL Reality TV

This is a weird one.

From The Washington Post:

Image from letsgomobile.com

On a pockmarked Loudoun County field of mud and weeds, the National Football League came to sell itself to China, a country it once never believed to be interested in football. It did this in an experiment the buttoned-down league has never dared to try before, with one of Asia's most beloved rock bands running around a children's flag football game last week, trailed by a film crew, making of all things -- a reality TV show.

"We've started to understand what the code is to get into the Chinese market," said Chris Parsons, the NFL's vice president in charge of international operations. This has almost nothing to do with the game of football itself, something the NFL has had little success pushing anywhere internationally, but with something far different: American culture.

Which is how Stone, Monster, Ashin, Masa, and Ming -- the members of a Taiwanese band called Mayday -- happened to spend 10 days riding a bus around the Northeast this month, meeting cheerleaders and marching bands and playing flag football for a TV show that will run on China Central Television, or CCTV, this fall. All in the hopes of converting tens of millions of Chinese into fans of American football.

It speaks to just how desperate the NFL is to make this happen.

...

There is little interest in football in China, where the most popular sports are table tennis and badminton. And while many young Chinese are big fans of the NBA and English Premier League soccer, both of which are broadcast on local television, the glimpses they have gotten of American football are bewildering.

"It's like explaining cricket to us," said Chad Lewis, the former Philadelphia Eagles tight end who as a student at Brigham Young University spent two years doing his Mormon mission in Taiwan and has become familiar with China in recent years.

Read the whole article

I wrote a LONG post about the NFL in China several months ago (this post is actually one of the best I've ever written, in my opinion at least). So I'm not going to get into the details of the inherent reasons why (American) football getting big abroad will be difficult right now since I've already done so.

The use of the band super pop group Mayday to promote the NFL is bizarre. I suppose the NFL has to get creative in trying to get its product into China. But having a group of Taiwanese teeny-boppers running around NFL headquarters and schmoozing with cheerleaders with the hopes of getting the Chinese masses into the game is going to be... interesting.

The Troubled CBA

I realize that I've been doing a fair amount of sports posts recently. I apologize to those completely uninterested. I'm just having a bit of trouble getting up the energy and motivation to wax about the latest goings on in the economic crisis or the political scene over here.

An article on the Chinese Basketball Association and its myriad of problems caught my eye yesterday. The league has quite the assortment of problems.

From The New York Times:

BEIJING — With 1.3 billion potential fans, China is increasingly seen as a financial promised land for N.B.A. stars through endorsement deals, and the league itself has established a robust organization here valued at $2 billion.

But China’s own professional league, the Chinese Basketball Association, has hardly enjoyed a smooth ascendance alongside this country’s basketball boom. American players and agents describe broken contracts, unpaid wages, suspicions of game-fixing and rising resentment toward foreign players. Several players have left China after failing to receive paychecks. Last month, the league announced that it lost $17 million last season, which ended in May.

Players and coaches in China’s professional league said problems escalated last season after the association loosened salary and court-time restrictions on foreign players, part of an effort to heighten the game’s appeal to China’s growing N.B.A fan base and to bring in more lucrative sponsorship deals. The association also hoped the prowess of imported players would help bolster China’s basketball prospects for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

The efforts yielded conflicting results. TV ratings soared, and foreign players found starring roles — the top 15 scorers were non-Chinese, and players like Bonzi Wells and Dontae’ Jones — who had less than stellar N.B.A. careers — frequently scored more than 40 points a game. At the same time, the dominance of foreign players fueled frustration.

“Foreigners should play supporting roles, not dominate the game,” said Zhang Xiong, director of operations for the Chinese Basketball Association.

...

The dominance of international players is not the only systemic problem in the 18-team league. Coaches, visiting players and their agents suspect that the outcome of some games is predetermined.

Players recounted locker-room lectures in which they were told to slack off on the court. On other occasions, they said, the best players had to sit out particularly competitive games or were sent home once their teams made the playoffs.

Gabe Muoneke, an American player who joined the Yunnan Bulls last season, said he was told by a Chinese teammate that a game against the Shanghai Sharks in November was fixed.

“He said, ‘Listen, my bookie told me we’re going to win today, so don’t worry,’” Muoneke said.

...

Muoneke said the incident confirmed what he and other players have long suspected: that game-fixing is a problem for the Chinese league.

“It’s common knowledge that Chinese teams bribe referees,” he said.

Read On

As much as the Chinese love basketball and as much as NBA Commissioner David Stern dreams of China being the future of the NBA, the country is having trouble embracing the game at the highest levels of competition.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention about the problems that the NBA is having and has had over the past couple years. There have been plenty.

At the same time though, the NBA and its place either at or near the top of the global sports scene is well-established. And then China's attempt at a league appears to be flawed in a large number of ways.

My only explanation is that professional sports in China are a curious phemonenon.

Sure, the NBA and European soccer leagues are incredibly popular over here. But when you turn on CCTV 5, the nation-wide sports channel, pretty much all you see are Olympic sports. This is still the case now, in 2009, the year after the Olympics in Beijing.

From my subjective experiences, I've seen far more international ping-pong, badminton, and diving competitions than I have coverage of Chinese professional basketball or soccer leagues. The masses here just don't seem too keen on supporting their local teams.

I can't say exactly why the Chinese prefer international sporting competitions like China vs. Cuba in women's volleyball compared to domestic professional sports leagues like Dalian vs. Qingdao in soccer. But from the times that I've glanced at CCTV 5, it appears that Chinese people prefer watching its athletes competing against other counties than competing with each other in professional leagues.

The Tao of Yao

The title of this post has nothing to do with the content of it. Just love the title of this book on Yao Ming.

Unfortunately, Yao Ming and his decrepit body have run into a major stumbling block.

From Reuters:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chinese basketball star Yao Ming's foot surgery will keep him out next season, but the National Basketball Association will not feel the pain in China because the U.S. sports league has grown beyond any one player there, analysts said on Friday.

Yao's NBA team, the Houston Rockets, said the towering center would undergo surgery next week after fracturing his foot during the playoffs in May, and would miss the 2009-2010 season.

For a league that has focused on building its fan base in China and making money through its TV contracts and sales of its branded-merchandise, the news was not a total shock as the injury to China's most famous sports personality had previously been called "career threatening."

However, the sport's popularity in China should allow the NBA to shake off the loss.

"Yao was a catalyst for the NBA's growth in China but now shares the stage with so many other players and league-sponsored initiatives," said Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon.

"Yao's absence, while disappointing, will not damage the NBA China effort," he added. "Rather, it will demonstrate how diversified the business has already become."

Read On

Yao Ming is a great player. I really like him. I've heard a lot of Chinese people, frustrated at this point in his career, say that they don't think he's any good. I always argue that Yao is a great player who plays with such finesse and smoothness for such a tall player. But I do concede that he can't stay healthy.

And at this point, it's safe to say that Yao Ming cannot stay healthy. Yao has missed significant playing time each of the past four seasons. And in this coming year, he will miss the entire season.

The guy is just too tall for his own good. Whether it's the rigorous routine he endured as a child in China or simply a product of being a genetic freak, Yao's body has broken down at the age of twenty-eight.

While Yao Ming missing next season will obviously have some effect on how Chinese people watch the NBA, I agree with the main premise of the Reuters article that the NBA will remain strong in China.

As the article goes on to say, Yao Ming jerseys are the tenth best-selling in the country. While Yao helped the NBA get on a better footing in China, China's love of the NBA goes much deeper than its country's most successful player.

The NBA began being broadcast on China's CCTV in 1987. Chinese people are well aware of Michael Jordan and everything he did in the 90s.

A few weeks ago, Qian and I were talking about Michael Jordan and she brought up Scottie Pippen and the guy who Jordan was a huge rival against late in his career. She couldn't remember his name. I threw out a couple possibilities and then said "Karl Malone." She responded, "Yeah, that's it!" Qian is not much of a sports fan at all. So the fact that she knows who Karl Malone is says a great deal about the roots that the NBA has already seeded in China.

The NBA is stronger than it's been since Jordan left the game in 1998. The league is full of young stars like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Dwight Howard, Kevin Durant, and many, many more. The success or failure of Yao Ming and his compatriot, Yi Jianlian, are not going to determine how well the NBA does in China.

I hope that Yao Ming can recover from his injury. He's a great athlete and seems like a genuinely good guy. But if he doesn't, China is still going to be crazy about the NBA.

The China Cavaliers

A group of Chinese investors are setting themselves up to become the first foreign owners of an NBA team.

From The Cleveland Plain-Dealer:

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Cavaliers already have a global star. A clutch-shooting global star at that. Soon they may have a global partner that could help secure that global star's future in Cleveland.

According to multiple sources within the Cavs, franchise majority owner Dan Gilbert has a tentative agreement in place to allow a group of Chinese investors to purchase a significant stake in the Cavaliers Operating Company, the entity that owns the Cavs and operates Quicken Loans Arena. The group is led by JianHua (Kenny) Huang, a Chinese businessman who has become successful by linking American and Chinese companies.

Huang and several of his partners were in Cleveland and attended Games 1 and 2 of the Eastern Conference finals this week. He sat in Gilbert's courtside box Friday night and watched LeBron James hit a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to even the series with the Orlando Magic at one game apiece.

"Dan Gilbert has been approached multiple times over the past few years by investors that wanted to join the Cavs' ownership group," said Len Komoroski, Cavs and Quicken Loans Arena president said in a statement.

"This has recently happened again. As has been done previously, we're in the process of reviewing the possibility presented to us. Beyond that, we do not feel it would be appropriate to give further comment at this time."

Calls to Huang's company were not returned.

The direct impact of the move is securing the future of the franchise, which has been in a minority ownership flux for the last couple years as it loses millions in attempting to build a championship-quality team around James. It will not only mean an injection of capital but will open the Cavs to business in China. The move, which has been kept mostly secret in America, is being supported by the NBA as they have encouraged development in China.

Read On

This article, from a Cleveland newspaper that obviously like to see LeBron James stay in Cleveland, talks about the impact that Chinese ownership could have on James and his decision on whether to stay in with the Cavaliers or go to the Knicks in New York in 2010:

The other effect, which is surely the more interesting side to Cavs fans, is how vital this new link could be for James -- providing a huge tie-in with an economy James is eager to tap.

...

"You have to think globally," James said recently of his business interests. "I have a lot of fans in China and they're important to me."

James and Nike, by far his largest sponsor, have been on a mission to create a bond with the Chinese over the last three years in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. James has made four visits to China, one with the Cavs as part of a preseason trip in 2007.

With basketball exploding in popularity among millions of young Chinese with exponentially growing buying power, James has targeted opportunities in the Far East to make the same kind of marketing impact in modern China that Michael Jordan had in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Only the market there operates on a dramatically larger scale.

As of 2009, there is no doubt that LeBron James is the best basketball player on the planet. I'm in awe of the guy. He's massive - 6 feet 9 inches, 275 pounds - yet he's the fastest player in the NBA and has the highest vertical leap. There's never been anybody like him before.



James won his first MVP award this year. He won Friday night's playoff game with a last second shot. And he's also studied a bit of Mandarin.

I can't imagine James can say much in Mandarin or that he's taking the language very seriously, but the simple fact that he cares at all about learning Chinese shows how seriously he takes his popularity in China.

James is twenty-four years old. No matter if you're in Cleveland in Chongqing or in Chengdu, it's going to be amazing watching LeBron over the coming decade.

Ending the Premier League Blackout

Although I'm an American, I do enjoy me some English Premier League football (soccer).

I played organized soccer from the time I was five until I was fifteen. Soccer and basketball were my favorite sports to play growing up. I also enjoyed watching soccer on TV when I could too. But the opportunity to watch soccer on TV in America is basically limited to the World Cup every four years. So I never got into the sport as much as I could've had I had the chance to watch it more.

My passing interest in watching soccer changed in 2006 though. My first roommate in China and still good friend, James, is one of the most hardcore Bolton Wanderer fans on the planet. He took my eager-to-learn soccer mind acted as my primer to the best football league on the planet - the English Premiership.

During James and my late night viewings of the league on Shaanxi TV 7, he explained to me why Chelsea is evil, why Arsenal is the most easy-to-root-for of the "big four," and why the bland, grind-it-out playing style of Bolton's (then) manager Sam Allardyce was effective. The games being shown for free in Xi'an truly gave me the opportunity to become a fan of English football. Indeed, I would get well into the discussions that my English friends were having on the league.

But then after the '06-'07 season, the English Premier League decided that allowing China, the already NBA-crazy country with the most potential EPL fans on Earth, to watch the games for free is a bad idea. They made all of the games pay-per-view, which essentially killed any opportunity for Chinese people or myself, to get into the games.

Citing the NBA's ridiculous popularity in China, I told my English friends that the league was making a huge mistake. It turns out that I was right and that the EPL now sees that the move to make games in China pay-per-view was a bad move.

From The Times Online:

Image of Liverpool's Dirk Kuyt from Sportydesktops.com

PRESSURE from the Premier League’s “big four” clubs has forced a change in strategy in the way it will sell its next tranche of overseas rights, with the league desperate to get back on terrestrial television in China.

This comes after lobbying by Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool, all furious at attracting a relatively low number of viewers in the world’s most populous country. China is home to 1.3 billion people but under the current deal there with a minor pay-per-view operator, hardly anybody subscribes.

WinTV won the Chinese rights for 2007-10 after bidding about £8m a year, a small amount in the context of the £210m gained from all overseas territories combined (about £630m over three years) but the highest bid from China. Its dreams of attracting 1.2m subscribers were hit by high pricing and bad marketing, and ratings in the tens of thousands remain so low they barely register.

Asia in general and China in particular are key markets for the big four; United are among clubs who will tour there this summer. The club’s chief executive David Gill says: “We must have better exposure. The reality is that [will] help us with our business goals and other commercial aims.” Well-placed sources confirm that Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool feel the same.

A Premier League source said last night: “We envisage a switch in strategy, probably to a dual approach with some pay-TV games and others free to air in China on state-run CCTV, if we can achieve that.

“With the way China is developing, there is a need for a more sophisticated approach. It’s not just a case of wanting the Premier League to be more popular than Serie A or La Liga in China, or even trying to make football as popular as basketball, it’s about fighting for viewers in the whole cultural landscape.”

Read On

My large contingent of English friends living here in Xi'an are going to be happy to hear this news. In future years, Chinese people and foreigners living in China will no longer have to illegally watch the games streamed on the internet at hubs like Justin.tv and Live Footy.

The only problem is that, from the way I understand the article, these expanded TV rights are going to take effect until the season after next. But hey, at least things are moving in the right direction for Chinese people having the opportunity to watch (at least some games of) the English Premier League for free on TV.

The NBA Show

As I've chronicled before, the NBA is huge in China. And despite the economic crisis, which is seriously threatening the viability of the NBA as it currently operates, the league continues to grow in China.

From Reuters:

Photo of Dwight Howard in Shanghai from Getty Images

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Watch out "Dancing with the Stars" and "American Idol." The National Basketball Association is launching its latest reality TV show, but fans will have to understand Mandarin Chinese to watch it.

"Mengniu NBA Basketball Disciple," airing in China starting in May, is part of the NBA's effort to build its popularity in the world's most populous country. The show follows the formation of a partnership that could lead to an NBA-backed league in China.

"We're having an incredibly exciting season here in run-up to the playoffs and you can absolutely feel that very much in China just as if you were in any of the cities here in the U.S.," said Heidi Ueberroth, president of the NBA's international business. "The popularity of the game in China is at an all-time high."

The NBA has supported Chinese basketball for decades, including first hosting the Chinese national team in 1985. Chinese interest spiked after 7-foot-6 center Yao Ming joined the NBA in 2002. The league now has 51 different networks broadcasting games in China.

...

The show, a basketball competition in 64 cities involving retired NBA stars, will be broadcast on Shandong TV in mainland China on Friday nights from May 22 to August 28. The winner will receive an all-expense paid trip to try out for the NBA's lower-level developmental league.

Chinese dairy company Mengniu, an NBA marketing partner since 2007, is the show's main sponsor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

An estimated 300 million people -- a total equal to the entire U.S. population -- play basketball in China, the NBA said, citing data provided by the Chinese Basketball Association. China's government also is planning to build basketball courts in up to 800,000 rural villages.

The number of viewers of league programing in China rose 34 percent last season to a record 1.6 billion, while traffic on the Chinese section of NBA.com has surged more than 50 percent.

Read the entire article

I've heard some skepticism in the past about whether there are really 300 million people in China who "play basketball." Based on what I've seen in my three years here, I'm skeptical of that number too. That's about one out of every 4.5 people. No, don't think so. Basketball is definitely popular, but not that popular.

The NBA does have something special going on in China though. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a Chinese man or woman say that he or she wants to go to America "so I can see an NBA game." Out of all the reasons I've heard people say they want to visit or live in America, that is by far the most popular I've heard.

While the NBA is undoubtedly pleased about its global growth, I'm curious about how much this expansion in China has paid off so far.

Sure, the NBA sells a lot of merchandise. The only problem is that most of it is shanzhai, or counterfeit goods. If a factory in southern China makes illegal LeBron James jerseys, the NBA isn't going to get a cut of that money. And believe me, there is a lot of fake NBA stuff floating around China. Surely, the NBA has to be one of the biggest supporters of getting Chinese officials to enforce intellectual property rights.

The NBA already has an amazing depth of international talent. It, more than any other American sport (except maybe baseball and Latin America), has embraced globalization and opening its fan base to the entire world.

The NBA's global popularity is already paying off for the league. I imagine in the future that the NBA's push in China and other countries will continue to be worth the investment and effort.

NFL Struggling in China

Chinese people assume that the NBA is America's favorite sport. They don't understand that it isn't at all. In fact, as of January, 2008, the NBA was America's sixth favorite sport behind the National Football League, Major League Baseball, college football, auto racing, and the National Hockey League.

One can't blame the Chinese for thinking the NBA is king in America though. America's actual favorite sport, football, is still a complete mystery to China.

From The Los Angeles Times:

Reporting from Beijing -- Super Bowl Sunday arrived in China's capital at daybreak Monday, but by kickoff it was standing room only at the Goose 'n' Duck, a British-style sports pub near sprawling Chaoyang Park in east Beijing.

The vast majority of the nearly 350 football fans who braved the frigid morning temperatures were expatriate Americans, many already with beer in hand despite the hour.

But in one corner of the two-story complex was a rabid group of Chinese fans watching the English-language broadcast with the help of two Mandarin-speaking commentators, perched on stools with microphones in hand, who had been hired by the National Football League.

The party, along with a gathering in Shanghai, was one small part of a six-year effort by the NFL to sell its sport in a country where the league has struggled to find a fan base.

Even at its own Super Bowl party, the challenges the NFL faces in China were on full display.

Although the Super Bowl was broadcast nationwide by state-run CCTV, Chinese authorities put it on a 30-minute delay, so organizers of the NFL party piped in a live feed from a Philippine satellite broadcaster. And though local fans were enthusiastic, they frequently stared blankly at TV screens during complicated penalties and on-field rulings.

Read On

When I was a young kid, I was always under the impression that the Super Bowl was the world's biggest sporting event. Sometime in the past several years though, I've come to realize that this is woefully inaccurate. It is, indeed, America's biggest sporting event, but it doesn't even make a peep elsewhere in the world.

As an American, I completely understand America's fascination with football. I grew up in Kansas City, which arguably has the best NFL fans in America. In addition to the supporting the Kansas City Chiefs, Kansas City is also instrumental in supporting the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, and the University of Missouri football programs.

Where I grew up, football is a very serious past time.

But living for a significant period outside of Kansas City, and America for that matter, I have grown to see why (American) football has not and, most likely, will not take off outside of America.

The two things that I see as absolutely fatal death blows to football's popularity outside of America are its complicated rules and its constant stopping and starting.

The first difficulty for people who didn't grow up with football are its myriad of obscure rules. Even to someone who grew up with football, rules like intentional grounding, neutral zone infractions, and illegal shifting can be counter-intuitive and confusing. For people who are trying to get into the game for the first time, these rules are a major barrier of entry.

Next is the fact that, inherent in the nature of football, there is a constant starting and stopping throughout the whole game. One could very reasonably say that football never gets flowing. A short burst of activity happens (usually about five to ten seconds) and then is followed by a much longer period of down time (at least thirty seconds).

A blogger at Wired Magazine recently did an interesting study. He took a stop-watch and timed how much action actually occurs in an NFL game (he did the experiment during a Kansas City - Denver game). His results are pretty astounding:

So, during the two hours and 56 minutes the game took to complete, throughout the 60 minutes of regulation time, the ball was in only in play for 12 minutes and 8 seconds.The rest of the time, players were standing around, plays were being reviewed and I was being bombarded by a multitude of beer commercials and truck advertisements.

I believe that this never-ending lack of action in a football game, which is endimic in the sport, cannot be changed. It is how the game is played.

As that study mentions, indirectly related to this constant stoppage in play are the ridiculous amount of commercial breaks that a viewer of a football game is subjected to. After living abroad and being away from football for a while, this really bothered me when I watched a bit of football while I was back home in December last year.

With commercials and a dragged out half-time, the average NFL game lasts a ridiculous three hours and fifteen minutes. College football games last even longer because the clock is stopped after every first down.

A couple years ago, I talked with an English bloke who'd studied at Pennsylvania State University. College football fans know that Penn State has one of the most storied traditions and best football teams in the country. Yet despite the great level of play this English man had been exposed to, he could not understand why everyone was so into American football. As he said, "People get together and stand around for three hours with an occasional play occurring on the field."

Despite the diatribe I'm currently going on against football, I am still a fan of the sport. Particularly, I like college football. I feel it has much more passion and pageantry than the NFL, which in recent years I've found to be stale.

My favorite team, the University of Kansas Jayhawks, have enjoyed an unprecedented amount of success (in their history) over the past few years. Getting to watch them from afar has been a treat.



I'm not saying football isn't worth watching or that Americans are silly for liking it. Instead, I'm saying that expecting people from abroad to sit down and watch a three hour plus game with all sorts of crazy rules being played by players and teams that they are vaguely familiar with is quite a tough sell.

And the NFL is having trouble getting a foot-hold in China for these very reasons.

Bonzi Takin' Over the CBA

If you're a mediocre NBA player marred by a history of off-the-court problems, what's the best way to resurrect your career?

From AFP:

TAIYUAN, China (AFP) — When Handel's Hallelujah chorus blares out of the gymnasium loudspeakers here it means only one thing - Bonzi Wells has slammed home another dunk.

Wells, 32, has received a warm welcome since coming here last month to play basketball, with the state media dubbing the former NBA star the best player ever to grace the Chinese Basketball Association.

Last week, in a badly needed win against the Beijing Ducks, Wells scored 19 of his 44 points in the fourth quarter as Shanxi turned a close game into an impressive 98-83 win.

In the final period, the 1.96-metre (six-foot-five-inch) guard/forward repeatedly played off the screens of his Nigerian teammate Olumide Oyedeji to beat his defender and race down the lane for slam dunks.

That's when the public address system blared a five-second snippet of Handel's Hallelujah chorus as the frenzied crowd -- few of whom were likely to know the classic's homage to the resurrection of Christ -- stood and cheered.

Read On

Wells' move to China has to be the best career-move for him. Over the course of his short career in the NBA, Wells had become one of the most dislikable players in the league.

Here is a snippet from GQ magazine and their "Ten Most Hated Athletes" article:

Not yet 30 years old, Bonzi Wells, shooting guard for the Sacramento Kings, has played for three NBA teams. “If you’ve got that much ability and you’re traded three times that early in your career,” says ex-NBA player and current ESPN commentator Tom Tolbert, “there’s obviously something wrong with you.”

Words like fumigate come up when people try to explain why GMs trade him. “It doesn’t bother him if his unhappiness infects the entire team,” says Memphis sportswriter Geoff Calkins, who recalls that when Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown was contemplating retirement (citing health reasons), “part of the calculus for Hubie was ‘It’s not worth it,’ and a big part of that was Bonzi. He helped bring Hubie down.”

When Brown’s successor, Mike Fratello, pulled Wells from a game at the end of last season, Bonzi threw a tantrum involving, characteristically, both profanity and projectiles. “This was in the final weeks of the season,” says Ron Higgins, another Memphis sportswriter, “when the Grizzlies were desperately trying to make the playoffs. Other players looked at him like, What the hell are you doing?”

Recalls sportswriter Jason Quick, who covered Bonzi in Portland: “He would flip off a fan and the next day say, ‘I blacked out.’ He’s such a con man. When the TV lights went on, he’d put on that million-dollar smile, then be an ass when they left.” He spat, infamously, on Danny Ferry. He bitched constantly at his coaches. He was fined for bad-mouthing his own fans in Sports Illustrated. He made a veiled threat after a reporter wrote a negative story about him. “He told me, ‘Don’t be surprised one day if you show up to practice with a steak over your eye,’ ” Quick remembers. “And I said, ‘If you want to do that, I’ll be a rich man.’ He said, ‘I’m not dumb enough to do it myself. I’ll have my posse do it.’ ”

It sounds like Wells has had an attitude adjustment since coming to China. He's now "willing to sacrifice himself for the team" and "do anything it takes to win." Only time will tell if coming to China really can straighten out Wells, but at least he's making the effort to clean up his image and his game. If it takes coming to China to get that change, more power to Wells for making the leap across the Pacific.

As the article states, Wells already had some fame in China before coming to play in Shanxi. This fame was largely due to having played on the Houston Rockets.

Playing on the Houston Rockets takes you a long way here in China. One might wonder why playing in south Texas has anything to do with China.

Here's the connection between the Houston Rockets and China:



Chinese people love Yao Ming. Yet they love his teammates in Houston even more.

I often ask Chinese people who their favorite player in the NBA is. Very rarely do people say "Yao Ming." Instead, about half tell me "McGrady." They are, of course, referring to Houston Rockets' guard Tracy McGrady.



McGrady's popularity is objectively evidenced by the results of the most popular selling NBA jerseys in China. McGrady, not Yao, was number one (although this year Kobe is the top seller).

I find China's obsession with McGrady amusing. Most NBA fans see McGrady as an oft-injured player who has never lived up to his potential. Yet the Chinese see him as a top superstar in the league.

More evidence of the benefits of playing on Yao Ming's team can be seen in former Duke University stand-out Shane Battier.



Battier is a decent NBA player who was able to make the 2006 US FIBA squad that played in Japan. But he's no superstar. I'm pretty sure that no American is ever going to see Battier selling sneakers on their TV screens. But in China, he's a hero:



Wells, McGrady, and Battier all prove one undeniable truth: Being Yao Ming's teammate makes you leaps-and-bounds more popular in China than you are in America.

What's Next for The Bird's Nest?

In the Bird's Nest Beijing has a very nice tourist attraction and an incredibly ornate building. Yet there is nothing really going on inside the place.

From The Associated Press:

BEIJING (AP) — Just five months after the Beijing Olympics, the Bird's Nest is a cavernous museum searching for a new purpose.

The iconic National Stadium drew acclaim for its daring design, an engineering marvel that borders on sculpture. Now it draws about 10,000 tourists a day — mostly Chinese — who pay 50 yuan (about $7) to walk on the stadium floor, then climb through the expensive seats to a souvenir shop hawking pricey mementos recalling Zhang Yimou's dazzling opening ceremony or the three world records set by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.

A symbol of China's rising power and confidence, the stadium may never recoup the $450 million the government spent to build it, particularly as China's economic slump worsens.

It has yet to draw big-ticket events, has no permanent tenant, and only one date has been announced for this year. Puccini's opera "Turandot," directed by Zhang, is set for Aug. 8 — the one-year anniversary of the Olympics' opening ceremony.

Read On

My friend, Taylor, who is visiting from America has been surprised at how much Olympic-related stuff (propoganda?) is still floating around China.

The TV on the bus we were riding the other day had a cartoon of the five Olympic mascots in a fantasy cartoon program with flying dragons and lizards. Their likeness can be seen on billboards and in street artwork everywhere too.



Based on the amount of merchandise and images you see of the characters, you'd never believe that the games ended almost half a year ago.

It is a shame that nothing can be done with the Bird's Nest. Despite having a population of over 10 million people, Beijing, sadly, doesn't have anything to put in the stadium permanently.

Coming from Kansas City, a city in middle-America of about 2 million people that over the past fifteen years has managed to put 75,000 people into its football stadium several times a year, I think that Beijing's inability to find anything to put into the stadium reflects poorly on the state of the city's, and probably the country's, civil society.



But of course I may just be reading too much into the Nest's perma-emptiness. It does seem to be flourishing as a tourist trap.

My Fantasy Football Team... Dominating

I've been on a tear with my fantasy football team recently.

Surprisingly, I don't have any Giants, Chiefs, or Buccaneers on my team. Instead, it's populated with players from the Bolton Wanderers, Wigan Athletic, and Hull City.

No, I'm not in a fantasy NFL league. I'm in a fantasy English Premiership league.

This is my first experience playing any sort of fantasy sports, and I'm absolutely loving it.

For the month of November, I won a league that has seven English guys living in Xi'an and myself participating. We each throw down 50RMB into the pot each month for the winner. So there will be 350RMB (about $50) coming to me once I track all of these guys down!

As the only American competing in a league against eight other Englishmen, I'm quite proud of the domination I enjoyed over them in November.

Here is the results table from my league, Xi'an Yuan, for November:


My squad, named Slug Dubbin' after one of my favorite tracks by The Orb, had an incredible month. I was ranked 11,686 out of the 1,761,849 total players. That means that I was better than 99.33% of the players all over the world playing this game in November.

This is a graphic I like seeing, my ranking on the leader board for the entire country of China for the month of November:



Here is my squad as it currently stands:



In addition to having a good November, I'm doing pretty well overall as well. Being ranked 54,586, I'm beating 97% of the players worldwide.

The basic rules for this version of fantasy Premiership are as follows:

Each team owner is given £100 million to work with. Each team must have two goal keepers, five defenders, five mid-fielders, and three forwards. Each week, you can make one transaction for free (each additional transaction costs you four points). Each team can only have three players from any one team, so you can not load up on all Chelsea, Liverpool, or Manchester United players.

Without a doubt, Christiano Ronaldo has been the key pick up for me. Ronaldo was this week named "Eupopean Footballer of the Year." He is a freak. He picks up insane amounts of points in this game.

Participating in this league has been a blast so far. It's given me the chance to get reengaged with the Premier League, after not paying attention at all last year.

One of the most bizarre consequences of living in Xi'an, China for almost three years is that I have learned so much about English culture from the loads of English people whom I work with. They far outnumber Americans in Xi'an, at least from the people I've been exposed to.

Strangely, right now I could have a better conversation with an English bloke about the current state of the English Premiership than I could with an American dude about the happenings of the NFL.

China does strange things to people.

Doping at the Paralympics

I must not have a very good understanding of what the Special Olympics Paralympics are all about.

From China's Xinhua News Agency:

BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- China's drug watchdog planned to keep close watch on the production and sale of performance-enhancing drugs during the upcoming Beijing Paralympics, as was the case during the recent Olympic Games.

State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) inspectors were conducting checks on pharmaceutical companies and retailers in the Chinese capital and Qingdao, a Paralympic co-host city in the eastern Shandong Province, SFDA spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said here on Wednesday.

The inspections between Tuesday and Thursday aimed to ensure no violation of the country's anti-doping regulation before and during the Paralympics, scheduled for Sept. 6 to 17, Yan told a press conference.

The rule, which took effect in March 2004, set stringent requirements for the supervision and management of performance-enhancing drug producers, including market entry, export approval and warning labels for athletes.

Read On

This news surprised me.

It really shouldn't have I suppose. It is clear that any athletes at any level will abuse performance enhancing drugs. Even at the Paralympics!