Yao Ming scores his best long shot
Yao Ming scores his best long shot
China's basketball star tells how he overcame countless rejections to win the heart of the one and only woman for him
By Sarah Ng
Yao and Ye in their official wedding photo, which was taken in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, at the end of last month. -- PHOTOS: AP, AFP and Sina.com
View more photos
AFTER a long courtship, off the court, China's basketball superstar Yao Ming won the biggest competition of his life last week.
The Houston Rockets centre married the woman he had been wooing since he was 17.
The 2.26m-tall basketball player's love story spanned two continents, the Pacific Ocean and eight years. After countless rejections and an injury, he won the affections of the woman he loves.
Yao, 27, married Ye Li, 26, last Monday in a wedding in their home town of Shanghai that reportedly cost 1 million yuan (S$200,000).
Ye, herself a 1.9m-tall player on the Chinese women's basketball team, became his wife at a private ceremony held at the five-star Shangri-La Hotel, Chinese news website sina.com reported.
In his 2004 memoirs, Yao: A Life In Two Worlds, the star of the National Basketball Association in the United States dedicated an entire chapter to his sweetheart. Yao first spotted Ye in 1997, when she was training with the women's national team. She was just 16, and he, 17.
'I have been interested in only one girl since I was 17.'
YAO MING, in his memoirs
In a 2004 interview with Chinese newspaper Chongqing Wanbao, he said that he was attracted to her vivacious personality, her laughter and her mischievous disposition.
While watching her train with her team, he tried to find an opportunity to talk to her, he told the newspaper.
When he finally nerved himself to approach her after practice, the shy and gangly teenage Yao became tongue-tied.
The only thing he could ask her was whether she had returned the team's jerseys.
Naturally, she brushed him off.
Eventually Yao started chatting with Ye regularly. But he vowed to himself that he would never ask her out until he had made it to China's national basketball team.
Yao achieved that goal two years later in 1999 - and, as planned, promptly asked her for a date.
Ye turned him down, not just once, but over and over.
'For one year she said no, real quick, like this, 'Will you go out with -' 'No',' Yao said in his memoirs.
He reckoned it was because Chinese girls are brought up not to appear to be too eager to accept a young man's courtship.
'I didn't give up because I had a feeling she was the one,' he said.
An undeterred Yao continued to call Ye often. He also sent her SMS messages, asking her how she was doing or just to tell her a joke.
By the end of that year, Yao realised Ye was finding it harder and harder to resist his considerable charms.
A big change in her attitude came, he felt, when he gave her 50 team pins on her 19th birthday - carefully selected from the 200 pins he had collected at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Ye finally went out with Yao, to a club in Shanghai, after a dinner for all Shanghai participants of the Sydney Olympics.
The next Chinese New Year, Yao went to Ye's dormitory in Beijing and phoned her from the ground floor, asking her to come down to meet him, the Titan sports newspaper reported.
She refused. He refused to leave.
When her team mates told her that Yao was standing like an 'electric wire pole' downstairs, waiting in the cold, Ye's heart melted.
She went to see him and they had a steamboat meal together.
Yao later helped arrange for her to seek treatment in the United States for an old injury to her right knee.
He even delayed joining the NBA for one year just to spend more time nurturing the budding romance.
That seemed to be a winning combination. His love and perseverance eventually won her over in 2002.
Ye acknowledged their relationship by making two friendship bracelets. She gave him his on Valentine's Day, before he left China to join the Houston Rockets.
Since then, the couple have never been spotted without the red bracelets - he wears his on his left wrist, while she wears hers on her right.
The bracelet was not the only way he let people know he had a girlfriend, Yao said in his memoirs.
He used a photo of her as the screensaver on his mobile phone.
His uniform number also reflects his love for Ye, who wore No. 11 for both the Chinese national team and the Shanghai Octopus, he said.
'I picked No. 11 to wear with the Rockets because it is the number that most looks like two Ys, as in Yao and Ye,' he said.
'You can also tell which car is mine because I have my number (11) and two Ys on the back and woven into the carpets.'
Fiercely protective of his girlfriend's privacy, China's most recognisable sports star forbade his friends and those who manage his career to talk to the media about her.
When quizzed by the media himself, Yao would only say he had a girlfriend. He refrained from naming her until 2004, when they appeared hand-in-hand at the Athens Olympics closing ceremony.
Ever the low-key couple, they picked Aug 6, a day just two days before China's one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for their nuptials in the hope of diverting attention from themselves.
For now, Yao is focusing on preparations for the next NBA season and the Olympics, so the couple have no plans for a baby for the time being, he said last Tuesday.
Yao and Ye will go to Europe for their honeymoon, but not until later this month. He postponed it so that he could attend a publicity-cum-charity event for the Special Olympics, his spokesman told the Chinese media.
For someone who has waited so long for the love of his life, another slight delay is no big deal.
As he said in his memoirs: 'I have been interested in only one girl since I was 17.'
China's basketball star tells how he overcame countless rejections to win the heart of the one and only woman for him
By Sarah Ng
Yao and Ye in their official wedding photo, which was taken in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, at the end of last month. -- PHOTOS: AP, AFP and Sina.com
View more photos
AFTER a long courtship, off the court, China's basketball superstar Yao Ming won the biggest competition of his life last week.
The Houston Rockets centre married the woman he had been wooing since he was 17.
The 2.26m-tall basketball player's love story spanned two continents, the Pacific Ocean and eight years. After countless rejections and an injury, he won the affections of the woman he loves.
Yao, 27, married Ye Li, 26, last Monday in a wedding in their home town of Shanghai that reportedly cost 1 million yuan (S$200,000).
Ye, herself a 1.9m-tall player on the Chinese women's basketball team, became his wife at a private ceremony held at the five-star Shangri-La Hotel, Chinese news website sina.com reported.
In his 2004 memoirs, Yao: A Life In Two Worlds, the star of the National Basketball Association in the United States dedicated an entire chapter to his sweetheart. Yao first spotted Ye in 1997, when she was training with the women's national team. She was just 16, and he, 17.
'I have been interested in only one girl since I was 17.'
YAO MING, in his memoirs
In a 2004 interview with Chinese newspaper Chongqing Wanbao, he said that he was attracted to her vivacious personality, her laughter and her mischievous disposition.
While watching her train with her team, he tried to find an opportunity to talk to her, he told the newspaper.
When he finally nerved himself to approach her after practice, the shy and gangly teenage Yao became tongue-tied.
The only thing he could ask her was whether she had returned the team's jerseys.
Naturally, she brushed him off.
Eventually Yao started chatting with Ye regularly. But he vowed to himself that he would never ask her out until he had made it to China's national basketball team.
Yao achieved that goal two years later in 1999 - and, as planned, promptly asked her for a date.
Ye turned him down, not just once, but over and over.
'For one year she said no, real quick, like this, 'Will you go out with -' 'No',' Yao said in his memoirs.
He reckoned it was because Chinese girls are brought up not to appear to be too eager to accept a young man's courtship.
'I didn't give up because I had a feeling she was the one,' he said.
An undeterred Yao continued to call Ye often. He also sent her SMS messages, asking her how she was doing or just to tell her a joke.
By the end of that year, Yao realised Ye was finding it harder and harder to resist his considerable charms.
A big change in her attitude came, he felt, when he gave her 50 team pins on her 19th birthday - carefully selected from the 200 pins he had collected at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Ye finally went out with Yao, to a club in Shanghai, after a dinner for all Shanghai participants of the Sydney Olympics.
The next Chinese New Year, Yao went to Ye's dormitory in Beijing and phoned her from the ground floor, asking her to come down to meet him, the Titan sports newspaper reported.
She refused. He refused to leave.
When her team mates told her that Yao was standing like an 'electric wire pole' downstairs, waiting in the cold, Ye's heart melted.
She went to see him and they had a steamboat meal together.
Yao later helped arrange for her to seek treatment in the United States for an old injury to her right knee.
He even delayed joining the NBA for one year just to spend more time nurturing the budding romance.
That seemed to be a winning combination. His love and perseverance eventually won her over in 2002.
Ye acknowledged their relationship by making two friendship bracelets. She gave him his on Valentine's Day, before he left China to join the Houston Rockets.
Since then, the couple have never been spotted without the red bracelets - he wears his on his left wrist, while she wears hers on her right.
The bracelet was not the only way he let people know he had a girlfriend, Yao said in his memoirs.
He used a photo of her as the screensaver on his mobile phone.
His uniform number also reflects his love for Ye, who wore No. 11 for both the Chinese national team and the Shanghai Octopus, he said.
'I picked No. 11 to wear with the Rockets because it is the number that most looks like two Ys, as in Yao and Ye,' he said.
'You can also tell which car is mine because I have my number (11) and two Ys on the back and woven into the carpets.'
Fiercely protective of his girlfriend's privacy, China's most recognisable sports star forbade his friends and those who manage his career to talk to the media about her.
When quizzed by the media himself, Yao would only say he had a girlfriend. He refrained from naming her until 2004, when they appeared hand-in-hand at the Athens Olympics closing ceremony.
Ever the low-key couple, they picked Aug 6, a day just two days before China's one-year countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for their nuptials in the hope of diverting attention from themselves.
For now, Yao is focusing on preparations for the next NBA season and the Olympics, so the couple have no plans for a baby for the time being, he said last Tuesday.
Yao and Ye will go to Europe for their honeymoon, but not until later this month. He postponed it so that he could attend a publicity-cum-charity event for the Special Olympics, his spokesman told the Chinese media.
For someone who has waited so long for the love of his life, another slight delay is no big deal.
As he said in his memoirs: 'I have been interested in only one girl since I was 17.'
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