Word: yao
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...attended the game—which the Rockets won in overtime, and in which Yao did not have a great performance—with two friends of Chinese descent. Also in attendance were over a hundred students who had come with Harvard’s Chinese Student Association (CSA). It was a unique outing for the organization, and one that was mimicked by a dozen other Boston Chinese student groups...
...have to understand that Yao Ming means a lot to the Asian-American community even if he’s not really Asian-American,” says Harvard sophomore Dennis Chira, a Celtics fan who went with the CSA group. “He’s what I and many others hope will bring a wrecking ball to the ignorant insulting age-old stereotype that Asians are unathletic...
...Chira points out, these hopes are widely shared by the Chinese-American student population, who made their feelings known loudly at the FleetCenter, cheering every time Yao touched the ball and shaking the arena the two times Yao scored. Race in athletics is always a touchy subject, and the recent furor over Title IX and affirmative action demonstrate that colleges are the staging arenas for pitched battles over diversity...
...professional sports are merit-based, and Yao proves that Asian players can succeed at the highest level. In the same way the Asian-American community appropriated the Seattle Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki, a star Japanese outfielder, when he jumped to the States, Yao is now the collective property of the Chinese-American community...
...CSA’s outing to the FleetCenter was extremely popular with its members, and it’s not hard to see why Yao can have an impact even at impermeable Harvard. Asian students have been a mainstay on campus for decades now, to the point that they are sometimes considered an “over-represented minority.” Indeed, nearly a sixth of Harvard undergrads are of Asian descent, and a good portion of those can claim Chinese heritage...