Yao Ming

about Yao Ming’s past, being the basketball fan that I am. It was my assumption that he was randomly blessed with extraordinary height and happened to play very well overseas, leading to him being drafted into the NBA. However, Yao’s rise to superstardom is nowhere near as natural as I thought. Brook Larmer’s 2005 biographical exposé, Operation Yao Ming: The Chinese Sports Empire, American Big Business, and the Making of an NBA Superstar, published by Penguin Books, provides incredible insight into Yao Ming’s life, which is more reminiscent of The Truman Show than any typical athlete’s upbringing. It is crucial to note that Larmer is an American foreign correspondent for Newsweek and the New York Times who was living in Shanghai at the time of the biography’s publishing. Therefore, he…

The Great Wall What makes a player earn the nickname “The Great Wall”. Yao Ming is a basketball player from China who played for the Houston Rockets, reaches 7’6” tall, dominated the NBA during his short eight season career, and was named “The Great Wall” because of his size and his talent. Finally having a promising Asian player in the NBA, a lot of Asians, and especially Chinese people hopped onto the bandwagon and supported him. So even though Yao had to move to a new country where he…

Following the abolition of the Confucian Examination system and the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, China intrigued by the “rise of new republics, rise of women’s suffrage, and the devices of referendum, recall, and industrial democracy provided the stimuli.” China was opportunistic that the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1911 opened up for educational reform and democratic initiatives. However, Radical ideas would be non-existent in China following the overthrow of the Qing and the…

For thousands of years China relied on traditional, “spiritual” medical techniques to heal any ailment. When Europeans began trading with and bringing Western influence to China, medicine was one of the last areas to change. Many Chinese people were reluctant to take part in Western medicine due to the vast differences between Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine and strength of tradition, as traditional medicine had been passed down for generations. However, Chinese medicine underwent a…

The silver trade of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries was a major historical process. The global flow of silver had many effects on the multitude of societies that participated. There were many economic effects, such as the heavy global economic involvement of many Asian nations in this trade (Documents 2,4,6,7,8) and greater monetary pressure in China during the Ming Dynasty (Documents 1,3,5), and some social nuances because of this trade, such as a greater European desire for Asian goods…

dynasty. By 1750 C.E., despite the rise and fall of the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Confucianism…

The East Asians through complete isolation and the Americans through a show of force. The Ming Dynasty forced the European merchants to an enclave on the coast. Then they also built a physical wall to keep the Europeans apart from the Chinese peoples. The Japanese were slower to this isolationist movement, at the beginning the Japanese allowed merchants in but once they realized that their culture, all based on the hierarchy and religion, was under attack they pushed the European merchants onto…

the Han dynasty, the first emperor of Ming dynasty moved the capital to Nanjing, but it then moved back to old palace in Beijing and the constructions began again in 1406 A.C. The Forbidden Palace was a Chinese imperial city during Ming and Qing dynasties. It was a home for twenty-four emperors. The palace consists of nine hundred buildings and nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine rooms. In additional, the palace was not only the center of politics, but it also the center of culture, the arts,…

wall to plus up troops or send reinforcements were needed. The forts were used to house the troops that maned the Great Wall, storages for military equipment, and also served as training grounds. The Great Wall then went through the biggest addition, which is known as the biggest project in the history of China. This was ordered under the Han Dynasty around 202 B.C.. During this addition to the wall, the older sections of the wall were strengthen to help protect the trade route along with…

ever! The purpose for the wall was to protect China and its people from Huns and barbarians attacking from the North, which were set on killing mass numbers of the Chinese natives. The Wall was also used to restrict the arrival of invaders coming from the Silk Road that wanted food and wealth which was common in China. The construction of a single segment of the wall took over a hundred years to complete. The creation of the Great Wall was influenced by these four big names. These include…