Chairman Yao
There were tons of Asian folks at last night's Sonics game against the Rockets, which meant that there were tons of Yao Ming fans who cheered him loudly when he was introduced (even louder than Tracy McGrady). There were also tons of folks wearing replica jerseys, but there weren't a lot of Asians wearing replica jerseys. And there were very few Asians wearing replica Yao jerseys.
When it comes to the top-selling NBA jersey, Yao Ming doesn't make the top 15. That's not surprising, since the NBA counts only jerseys sold from its New York store and its online store. What is sort of surprising is that, according to the NBA, the best-selling jersey in China isn't Yao Ming's. In fact, Yao comes in 6th, behind Kobe (no. 1), AI, T-Mac, Dwyane Wade, and Lebron. Yao had the 3rd spot in 2006, but he's apparently fallen even more out of favor amongst his countrymen.
Last night, I set out to find a Chinese person wearing a Yao jersey at the game, so I could ask them why Chinese people don't buy Yao jerseys. It wasn't easy. There were a fair number of people wearing Rockets jerseys, but most of them were McGrady's (and one of Steve Francis). The first person I found wearing a Yao jersey was Stephen Capoferi, 24, from Auburn, who is not Chinese. "I was born and raised in Houston," he explained. "I will represent the Rockets until the day I die. I wear the Yao jersey because he's the best center in the NBA, point blank. Shaq has nothing on him."
Capoferi also owns a T-Mac jersey, but decided to wear Yao's to the game because there was a chance that McGrady would sit out the game. "Gotta bring the Yao," he said. "He's the shit."
Over in section 128 was Adrienne Gee, 27, who had driven down from Vancouver, B.C., with her dad, Gordon, for the game. She received her Yao jersey as a Christmas present a couple years ago. "I've been a Yao fan since he came into the league," Adrienne said. "But I'm also a Sonics fan."
As such, Adrienne had a difficult time choosing her ideal outcome for the game. "That's a tough one," she said. "Either way, I'm winning, I guess."
The Gees are Chinese, but they're about as Chinese as I am, which is to say not very. If you closed your eyes while talking to them, you'd think you were talking to Wayne Gretzky and Avril Lavigne, or two other Canadians of your choice. Still, I asked Gordon why Chinese people, while they embrace Yao as a player, don't buy his jersey. "I have no idea," he said. "That's kind of strange. Maybe because he's not that much of a presence on the court. He's not flashy."
I found Archie Petritz, 8, in section 110, wearing perhaps the smallest Yao jersey in the arena. He and his family, who are not Chinese, were in town from Butte, Montana, and I asked Archie what brought them to Seattle. "I think we came for Easter," he said.
"He came to see the Rockets," his mother, Dawn, said, smiling. "The rest of us came for Easter."
"The Rockets are my favorite team and Yao is my favorite player," Archie said. "He's pretty tall and I like how he does slam dunks in my video game and he's from Beijing, China."
I thought about telling Archie that Yao's actually from Shanghai, but there was no interrupting him.
"I think he's real good and he'll make it to the NBA finals and I think he'd make a good MVP for the NBA," Archie continued. "I got a model of him and I have a jersey of him. I got it a couple of Christmases ago and I wear it for Rockets games and sometimes to school."
Back on the concourse, I ran into Darrell Wright, 19, from Renton, who was looking for a ketchup dispenser that still had ketchup. Wright, whose first name is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, was not Chinese, but he wore a Yao jersey. Wright said he owns lots of other jerseys, but only one from the Rockets. "I'm not a Rockets fan," he said. "I'm a Yao fan. People ask me all the time, 'why Yao?' They give me looks."
So why do you wear his jersey?
"Because he's tight. I don't care that he's Asian or nothing. If he can play, I'll wear his jersey."
Finally, right before the fourth quarter, I found Zhi-Yan Shao, 31, and his wife Dan Liu, 30. Both were Chinese and actually from China--Shao from Henan province and Liu from Shan Dong. (They now live in Seattle and work for Microsoft.) Liu was wearing a Yao jersey that she had bought for the game, her first time watching Yao in person. At the end of halftime, she walked down the aisle behind the Rockets basket and held up a sign, "Yao Rock," while Yao shot around.
"We love him," Liu said. "He represents Chinese people in America."
Liu also mentioned that she knew her sign was grammatically incorrect. "There was no space for the 's,'" Liu explained.
"We'll get a bigger sign next time," Shao said.
Then I asked them why McGrady's jersey sells better in China than Yao's. Liu took a socio-political approach, suggesting that it probably had to do with not wanting T-Mac to feel left out. After all, it would be sort of vulgar (especially for Chinese people) to elevate one individual over another. "McGrady is Yao's working partner," Liu said.
Shao was a bit more pragmatic with his answer. "Maybe not many people play center in China," he said.
I asked Liu if she thought Yao saw her during halftime. She nodded. "I called his name with my highest strength voice so he could hear," she said.
"Then he missed the shot," Shao said.
22 comment(s)
Sean says:
This article is retarded....the reason his jersey sales have gone down in China is because EVERYONE IN CHINA ALREADY HAS HIS JERSEY!! No need for two, but I like how everyone wants to hate on Yao cause he\'s more of a finesse center and not much of a presence on the court. Well...if you watched this Sonics game this article speaks of, then you would of saw Yao go off for 15 points in like half a quarter cause Nate Collison gave him a hard foul. Yao is the man and the Rockets are due for a ring....
Posted On: Wednesday, Apr. 11 2007 @ 9:43AM
j says:
i enjoyed the article. disregard the previous negative comment, as it is unlikely that every person in china (there are a few) already has the jersey. plus, the commenter who meant to insult your writing should have written \"you would have seen\" rather than \"you would of saw.\" that is amazingly poor english.
Posted On: Wednesday, Apr. 11 2007 @ 12:00PM
Tom says:
Same thing with NFL. Quarterbacks, receivers, running backs are just more popular. Nothing racial or political about it. Yao not being loud mouthed, flashy, intimidating doesn\'t help either.
Posted On: Wednesday, Apr. 11 2007 @ 12:13PM
Red says:
\"The Gees are Chinese, but they\'re about as Chinese as I am, which is to say not very. If you closed your eyes while talking to them, you\'d think you were talking to Wayne Gretzky and Avril Lavigne, or two other Canadians of your choice.\"
So...it\'s not very Chinese to speak English properly? As in, Chinese people, by ethnicity, are not supposed to be capable of speaking without a Chinese accent of some sort? Would a Spanish person who spoke English properly be \"not very Spanish\"?
Posted On: Wednesday, Apr. 11 2007 @ 6:18PM
nyk says:
in agreement to the comment above me...that part made me cringe a little. i hate when people tell me \"oh, you\'re not even chinese\" because i was born here, speak fluent english, and suck at math.
otherwise an enjoyable article.and guards are always more popular.
Posted On: Thursday, Apr. 12 2007 @ 8:27AM
serena says:
should we do a study on why white people don\'t buy more steve nash jerseys?
Posted On: Thursday, Apr. 12 2007 @ 8:29AM
anavlas says:
We probably don\'t see too many Yao jerseys for the same reason that we don\'t see too many Tim Duncan jerseys. Who wants to be fundamentally sound? Nobody. It is all about the flash.
Posted On: Thursday, Apr. 12 2007 @ 10:55AM
Huan says:
No, Serena, but I\'d be curious to see how Nash\'s jersey sells among Canadians.
I was tempted to dismiss Red\'s comment by assuming that he or she is not Chinese. (And by Spanish do you mean someone from Spain or someone from a Spanish-speaking country? Or the American-born child of that person?) But it appears what I wrote about the Gees is confusing also to (American-born, I assume) Chinese like NYK (and myself). The point, which perhaps was not made well, was that the Gees were very, very Westernized. Over here, the Gees would clearly be identified as Chinese by ethnicity, though they are Canadian by nationality (Chinese-Canadian?). In China, they would be considered Chinese, but not *Chinese*, if that makes sense, because they\'re Canadian. There is a great divide between native Chinese and Chinese-Whatevers, that also depends on where they\'re standing.
Anyway, this has been an interesting discussion. For some recreational reading on me trying to figure out the fluid dynamics of race and ethnicity, here\'s something I wrote for a former paper:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/cover/2006/cover0303b.html
Posted On: Thursday, Apr. 12 2007 @ 11:23AM
pdawg says:
As an asian american,I have to agree with Anavlas comparing Yao to Tim Duncan - if you had an asian-american player with a little street cred dropping 20+ pts a night, getting T\'d up for getting a little emotional on a bad call, listening to hip-hop or heavymetal or whatever, I think you\'d see more jerseys being sold, regardless of the ethnicity of the buyer.
Posted On: Thursday, Apr. 12 2007 @ 11:48AM
Red says:
Huan, I\'m Chinese and I\'m from Canada. I didn\'t sense anything malicious in what you wrote, I just found that one particular comment to stand out. Thank you for the clarification. And I meant Spanish, as in, from Spain, but perhaps next time I should use a country without a colonial past to avoid this confusion.
- Redford Cheng
Posted On: Thursday, Apr. 12 2007 @ 12:25PM
Serena says:
i understand the wonder over why fans in china don\'t buy more yao jerseys because yes, that\'s his home as canada is nash\'s.
but i don\'t find it odd that chinese fans in the u.s may prefer jerseys of other players. i\'m not so sure they deserve an interrogation...chinese-american fans have as much a right to buy kobe or lebron\'s jersey over yao\'s as everyone else.
Posted On: Thursday, Apr. 12 2007 @ 7:24PM
rkang says:
maybe chinese don\'t buy yao jerseys b/c every time they wear them some black or white guy will yell \"yao ming!\", \"yao ming\'s brother\" or some other asinine racially charged shit at them.
Posted On: Friday, Apr. 13 2007 @ 5:13PM
Richard says:
Chinese don\'t buy Yao\'s jersey becasue he\'s not flashy, he doesn\'t dunk on people as much.
Also, a Yao\'s fan doesn\'t need to own his jerseys to be a Yao\'s fan. I started and addicted to following the NBA all because of Yao. And all because of Yao is Chinese and I\'m Chinese. I like the way he represent himself and his people. By the way, I don\'t have a Yao\'s jersey
Posted On: Friday, Apr. 13 2007 @ 7:27PM
kevin says:
Interesting topic. I\'m a Chinese American, been in Beijing for about 4 years now and asked the same question to my local Chinese friends. I happen to wear some Yao jerseys here and there but rarely(I am RARELY) do you see local Chinese wearing Yao paraphenelia over here.
This is how I explain the phenomena(based on talking to my Chinese friends and living in China):
1. Yao isn\'t flashy, like Kobe, Lebron, etc. so they don\'t wear his gear. Let\'s see how Yi Jianlian (who is much more athletic and flashy than Yao) does in the NBA and see if this theory is supported.
2. Just because they don\'t by his gear doesn\'t mean that there isn\'t any pride. Chinese have a tendency to keep how they feel inside, not like a North American, who will probably express outwardly(via wearing jerseys or by words) how they feel. Many people have a lot of pride in Yao Ming, but they might not express it in the way we do(North Americans.)
3, Chinese are pretty critical of Yao Ming\'s progress, probably more than anyone else I know. They have high expectations of him and want him to succeed in the international arena. So getting the props(or recognition) that Yao deserves from a Chinese person is pretty tough indeed. Wearing his jersey is like saying, \"This guy\'s a stud and I fully endorse and love his game.\" Maybe when he helps Houston get a ring or one day becomes the MVP, there might be more Yao jerseys out there in China.
Hope this helps.
Posted On: Monday, Apr. 16 2007 @ 8:02PM
Kevin says:
Interesting topic. I\'m a Chinese American, been in Beijing for about 4 years now and asked the same question to my local Chinese friends. I happen to wear some Yao jerseys here and there but rarely(I am RARELY) do you see local Chinese wearing Yao paraphenelia over here.
This is how I explain the phenomena(based on talking to my Chinese friends and living in China):
1. Yao isn\'t flashy, like Kobe, Lebron, etc. so they don\'t wear his gear. Let\'s see how Yi Jianlian (who is much more athletic and flashy than Yao) does in the NBA and see if this theory is supported.
2. Just because they don\'t by his gear doesn\'t mean that there isn\'t any pride. Chinese have a tendency to keep how they feel inside, not like a North American, who will probably express outwardly(via wearing jerseys or by words) how they feel. Many people have a lot of pride in Yao Ming, but they might not express it in the way we do(North Americans.)
3, Chinese are pretty critical of Yao Ming\'s progress, probably more than anyone else I know. They have high expectations of him and want him to succeed in the international arena. So getting the props(or recognition) that Yao deserves from a Chinese person is pretty tough indeed. Wearing his jersey is like saying, \"This guy\'s a stud and I fully endorse and love his game.\" Maybe when he helps Houston get a ring or one day becomes the MVP, there might be more Yao jerseys out there in China.
Hope this helps.
Posted On: Monday, Apr. 16 2007 @ 8:10PM
danny paau says:
\'ve been Yao fan since start, never owns any jersey or anything but follows his game reports whenever I can. Why be ripped off big bucks just because his name appears on it ? Yao has a better place on me--in my heart, in my mind, in my blood....than on a piece of cloth. Guess same practical (and perhaps frugal) thinking among Chinese...Unfortunately sometimes heroes (including movie hereoes or sports heroes) statues, jerseys...etc sell dramatically only when they die, like Bruce Lee!
Posted On: Tuesday, Apr. 17 2007 @ 7:53AM
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Beau says:
I just like the first guy he interviewed comments.
The first person I found wearing a Yao jersey was Stephen Capoferi, 24, from Auburn, who is not Chinese. \"I was born and raised in Houston,\" he explained. \"I will represent the Rockets until the day I die. I wear the Yao jersey because he\'s the best center in the NBA, point blank. Shaq has nothing on him.\"
Capoferi also owns a T-Mac jersey, but decided to wear Yao\'s to the game because there was a chance that McGrady would sit out the game. \"Gotta bring the Yao,\" he said. \"He\'s the shit.\"
Now thats a Real Rockets Fan!!!
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