During Tuesday’s announcement about the charity gala that Yao’s Foundation will throw with the Museum of Fine Arts on January 30th, there was something else that Yao announced that should also be noted.

Yao donated $100,000 of his own money to help rebuild four playgrounds in Houston that had been destroyed by Hurricane Ike.

The reason? Yao stated:

“I’m very close to local people. They treat me like family, and I want to give back. ”

Not to get too sentimental, but I think this statement shows Houston has lived up to its reputation of being hospitable to an outsider like Yao. It brings to mind what I saw Trevor Ariza say the other day about his short time in Houston.

The biggest adjustment (from living in LA is that) everybody is really, really, real, real friendly in Houston. So, having to say ‘how you doing?’ and all that stuff is a little different. Everyone is like that, very, very homey, very friendly oriented.

Back to Yao’s donation. This past summer, Yao toured two local schools with “nature-based” playgrounds before deciding to give money to the cause since it overlapped well with his foundation’s mission to promote education and opportunities for children. That’s what motivated him to get involved with helping reconstruct these playgrounds.

In case you missed it, here are a few more photos from the announcement of Yao’s donation as well as the charity gala on January 30th.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 10:24 am and is filed under Charity work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.