It was a busy day for Yao on Friday in Shanghai where he took part in two press conferences.

The first one was with the Shanghai Sharks — the team he owns — where they announced they have a new sponsor, the Cheng Shin-Toyo Tire & Rubber Company, which is the 11th largest tire manufacturer in the world and the top bicycle tire manufacturer. They have a brand of tires called MAXXIS, so the official name of the team will now be the Shanghai Oriental MAXXIS Sharks.

The company employs over 15,000 people and operates in nine countries: Canada, the People’s Republic of China, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States. They have even been a sponsor of the Houston Rockets.

For more photos from this press conference, click here.

Later, Yao took part in another press conference, this time for the International Wildlife Conservation Organization.

Yao has been the Global Image Spokesperson since 2006 for the Active Conservation Awareness Programme Wild (ACAP WildAid). At the press conference, a new public service announcement video featuring Yao was shown in both English and Mandarin.

Yao joked at the press conference that since he is the owner of the Shanghai Sharks, he obviously he cannot eat shark fin soup. But seriously, as the video demonstrates, he made the vow not to eat the soup and asked that everyone else refrain from doing the same. During the press conference, his players pledged not to eat it as well.

If you notice in the photo below, former Houston Rocket John Lucas III is now a member of the Sharks (4th from the left).

For close-up photos of Lucas, Yao, and the Shanghai Sharks team, click here.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 1:38 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.