It’s interesting that Yao Ming has been making some public appearances while everyone is obviously curious if he’s going to officially announce his retirement during his July 20th press conference.

On Tuesday in Beijing, Yao made an appearance together with a group of famous actors, singers and athletes, including Jackie Chan, Jay Chou, Song Zuying, Han Hong, Li Yuchun, Lin Dan and Wang Nan in an evening variety show at the People’s Great Hall in a massive cross strait youth exchange program involving over 10,000 youngsters from Taiwan and China. Yao gave basketballs with his autograph to 8 youngsters that happened to have their birthday on July 12.

For more photos from the event, click here.

On Wednesday, Yao appeared at the People’s Great Hall in Beijing to show his support at a press conference of a charity event organized by famous Chinese Tibet-born singer-songwriter Han Hong together with some other prominent government officials, including Zhang Haidi, Chairwoman of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation. International actress Zhang Ziyi was also there.

Yao was obviously the focus of the media as reporters tried to press for the latest development about the “rumor” of his retirement. But he refused to make any comments, and just politely asked the reporters to focus on Han Hong’s charity event.

For more details and photos about the event, click here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2011 at 5:09 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.