Operation Yao Ming

"I don’t have any interest in basketball, but the great thing about this story is that it becomes another way of telling the story of China . Look at the story of Yao Ming’s mother, for example. By the time Yao Ming was a star for the Houston Rockets, his mother is this sort of innocent, loyal Mommy, in the kitchen in Houston, making her son lovely Chinese food that he can’t get in the States. But when she was growing up, his mother was a rising basketball star, and more to the point, a member of the team of Red Guards that toppled the leadership in the Shanghai Sports Association, who then got put through horrible struggle sessions. Ten years later she was toppled herself, when the Cultural Revolution was over and the Gang of Four went down. Yao Ming had to struggle a bit there, because his parents had had their privileges withdrawn. The book minutely chronicles that – the research is absolutely fantastic, right down to, as you say, the touch of eugenics in his creation. Yao Ming was a product of these two tall people, mated to create a great star. The other interesting bit is that you often forget that the state controls sport in China. So when it comes to selling Yao Ming and another basketball player, the back and forth between the state trying to both retain its property, and trying to profit from it, makes a great read. I think the state allows him to go on contract, but it initially got a lot of the money."