On Tuesday night, the UCLA men’s basketball team played Yao’s Shanghai Sharks on the last stop of their tour of China over the past week.

Before the game, Yao was introduced to the crowd.

The top sportsbook reviews probably didn’t have odds on the game because it was an exhibition game, but UCLA won 92-63 in a game that was closer than what the final score indicates.

The Sharks played without key starters, and were able to hang close into the fourth quarter before UCLA made defensive stops to pull away on a 19-2 run.

UCLA coach Ben Howland said after the game, “They were making a good run. They were a good team, good coaching.”

Click here for more photos from the game.

You can also find more photos from the game on the UCLA Men’s basketball team Facebook photo album for the game right here.

You would think after Yao’s exhausting trip to Africa was over, he would come back home and relax a bit. Not for Yao. He continued his very busy schedule.

Right after landing in Hong Kong, he jumped on an economy flight to Leshan of Sichuan. Yes…economy.

Check out a photo that someone took of Yao in a coach seat! (He had to take another flight on which business and first class seats were sold out).

Yao only had 4 hours’ sleep after arriving back in China from Africa. He arrived in Leshan of Sichuan at 9:00am to checkout his Yao Foundation Project Hope Primary School basketball camp and league for its inaugural season. Below are some pics of Yao checking it all out.

Click here for more photos of Yao at the basketball camp.

Later that evening, Yao and Los Angeles Clipper Caron Butler attended a performance of a variety show of the participating students {Butler is involved with Yao and the NBA in the basketball camp as well).

Later Yao came on stage and read the names of 27 students whose birthdays are in the month of August. Then he gave them all birthday presents, and even led the audience to sing “Happy Birthday.”

Click here for more photos from the students’ performance.

The next day, Yao and Caron were head coaches for an exhibition game between two teams formed from the 400 students who participated in the camp.

Click here for more photos of Yao coaching at the camp. Here’s an article with more information about Yao’s involvement with the camp.

Last week you might have seen this post we had of Yao in Africa. Since then, he has been keeping very busy bringing attention to the terrible slaughter of elephants and rhinoceros in Africa for their tusks, many of which are used to create ivory jewelry bought by Chinese.

Below is a striking photo of Yao in an “ivory room” of confiscated tusks, showing how bad the problem is. And these are just the tusks that were confiscated.

Below, Yao meets a village elder in the village of Samburu. What an amazing shot.

…and here he meets some children on a dirt basketball court.

There are so many photos and stories on a special blog that WildAid has setup for Yao, I couldn’t possibly cover it all here. But I suggest you check it out as Yao brings more attention to Chinese citizens about the damage being done to Africa’s wildlife — more than any other Chinese citizen could do.

By the way, Yao’s trip is getting attention even among the U.S. press, as seen by this coverage in Yahoo! Sports’ basketball blog. Talk about Yao transcending the sport of basketball!

Here’s the latest on Jeremy Lin in China…

On Friday, Jeremy left Shanghai and arrived at the Guangzhou airport where Linsanity was in full force. Many fans were there to greet him, with some fans waiting over 5 hours since Jeremy’s flight was delayed 3 hours because of bad weather.

Click here for more photos of Jeremy’s arrival in Guangzhou.

On Saturday, he worked out in Dongguan with the Dongguan New Century Leopards, the team he trained with and played for temporarily last summer during part of the NBA lockout.

He later traveled back to Guangzhou to attend the national roadshow stop of Volvo China’s model V60 at the Guangzhou Baiyun Wanda Plaza, one of the leading business and shopping centers in Guangzhou.

Also in attendance was Taiwanese-American David Wu Dawei (actor, singer, TV show host and VJ).

Click here for more photos of Jeremy at the Volvo event.

On Sunday (August 19th), Jeremy presided over the opening ceremony of the 2012 JLin Basketball Camp at the Dongguan Basketball School. This camp will last from August 19th-22nd. There are 80 participants (boys 13-16 years old) previously scouted from basketball camps held in 8 major Chinese cities.

Over 50 press/media reporters from USA, Hong Kong and China attended the opening remarks.

Jeremy mentioned in his opening remarks that his camp was being sponsored by various enterprises, therefore everything (round-trip transportation to Dongguan, meals and accommodations) will be free for the boys. The motto of the camp is Pursue Your Dream to Excel and Surpass Yourself ????????.

Click here and here for more photos of Jeremy at his basketball camp.

Thanks to Raymond for these updates.

Here’s a recap of some of what Jeremy Lin has been doing in Shanghai this week.

On Sunday and Monday, Jeremy was out on the basketball court shooting some new TV commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken (China).

Later it was announced that Jeremy would be the spokesperson for a KFC-China national youth 3-on-3 basketball tournament that is held in over 500 cities. He promised he will show up for the debut game of the new season in early September.

On Tuesday (August 14th), Jeremy filmed a new Volvo commercial to promote their new S60 model. Below are photos from the shoot.

Click here for more photos of Jeremy at the Volvo photo shoot.

On Wednesday (August 15th), Jeremy and his family were guest stars for the recording of the inaugural show of China’s Got Talent (Season 4) ????? for Shanghai Oriental TV.

At the end of the show, the crew wheeled out a big birthday cake to pre-celebrate Jeremy’s 24th birthday, which is August 23rd.

Click here for many more photos of Jeremy and his family, including brother Joseph, at the China’s Got Talent show. Thanks to Raymond for posting the news and pics in the forum.

After Yao left the London Olympics a few days ago, he took a Virgin Atlantic flight to Africa where he has been filming a documentary for WildAid to help save endangered species.

Below, Yao is with armed guards in Kenya who do rhino patrolling at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, home to Kenya’s highest concentration of wildlife.

The guards know each and every rhino by name and sight, and if they can’t find one during their daily patrol, then they use a plane to patrol the entire conservancy until all rhinos are accounted for. Pictured below, Yao meets two of the rhinos.

But protecting rhinos from illegal poaching is time consuming and expensive. That’s one of the reasons why Yao has made the trip, and is blogging for WildAid here where you can see many more photos and personal blog entries from his trip.

You can also see Raymond’s coverage of Yao’s trip starting here in the YaoMania forum.

As you may know, Jeremy is currently on a one-month trip to Taiwan and China. On Tuesday, he left Taiwan and arrived in Beijing for a few days. Unlike his arrival in Taipei last week, there were no fans or media at the airport waiting for him, nor at the St. Regis Hotel where he is staying.

Click here to see more photos of Jeremy’s arrival at the Beijing airport.

After Jeremy checked into this hotel, Jeremy stayed true to his workout ethic and went to a nearby facility for a 2-hour training session.

On Wednesday, Jeremy attended an online Q&A with the founder and chairman of Geely Automobile, Li Shufu (Geely is the second largest private automobile manufacturer in China and acquired Volvo in March 2010). The theme of the topic was “chasing one’s dream.”

Click here for more photos from the online Q&A session, and photos with Li Shufu.

On Thursday, Jeremy paid a visit to a primary school for children of migrant workers in Chang Ping of Beijing.

Click here for more photos of Jeremy at the school.

Later, Jeremy attended a press conference to announce his summer basketball camp for Chinese kids. The camp will be held in the Dongguan Basketball School starting August 19th, with 80 kids from all over the country joining the camp. Preliminary camps had been held in 8 different cities to scout and pick the participants of the camp.

On Saturday, Jeremy flew to Shanghai and was received completely different than his arrival in Beijing earlier in the week. Hundreds of fans waited for him at the airport, and bodyguards were needed to get him through the crowd.

Click here for more photos of Jeremy’s arrival in Shanghai, and stay tuned for more updates of Jeremy in Shanghai. A big thanks goes to Raymond for helping provide this info.

What other player do you know would get on a Skype call with a fan to console him for leaving his favorite team?

The father of 5-year old Naim posted a video on YouTube of his son’s despondence over Jeremy’s departure from the Knicks. Lin evidently saw the video and offered to get on Skype with the kid.

The video is below. Most of it involves alot of chit-chat on Naim’s side of the call, with very little spoken by Jeremy that can be heard because of poor audio. You can get the gist of the entire video in the first minute.

Although the men’s Chinese basketball team lost all 5 of their Olympic games by 25.2 points per game, the AP published a pretty good piece on how they have started to practice more like Western teams, thanks to American coach Bob Donewald.

I highly recommend the article. Below are just a few excerpts I thought were interesting:

“I told him in 2010, there’s two most difficult jobs in the world right now,” veteran center Wang Zhizhi said through an interpreter. “One is saving the miners in Chile and the other one is taking over the Chinese men’s basketball team.”

“I know there’s some talent coming up,” said Donewald, who coached his last game with China on Monday. “I just hope it’s developed properly. It’s got to start young and it’s got to be done in the right way.”

In three years at the helm, Donewald and Philo managed to change some aspects of China’s rigid basketball program. Donewald negotiated the power to choose the team, a huge departure for a CBA that has dictated the roster, coaching staff and even bed times for players. The players no longer wear themselves out with eight hours a day of practice and the focus has shifted to defense.

“I’m the first coach in the history of this damn thing to be able to pick my staff and the roster,” Donewald said over dinner at the Westfield Mall. “And now that was my speech to the players. ‘I picked you. I picked you for a reason.’

“It also gave me the ability to say, if you don’t play any defense, you’re out of here.”

When Donewald first laid down the defense-first edict, Zhizhi told him, “This is China. We don’t play defense.”

Whenever a player did not talk on defense, his name was put on a board with a check mark by it. The more checks, the more sprints he had to run after practice.

“What we try to do is point out that basketball culture is different than culture culture,” Donewald said. “In Chinese culture, you don’t talk a lot. It’s very reserved. In basketball you have to talk. You have to be outgoing. So what we’ve tried to do is to get a basketball culture when you step between the lines, there was a little more talking to it.”

In a developmental system where every decision is made for them, they have tried to instill some sense of individualism, some “swagger,” as Philo likes to put it.

Today in London Chinese 110 meter hurdler Liu Xiang had another heartbreaking moment, tripping over the first hurdle in his heat, falling to the ground, and not finishing the race.

After winning the gold in the 2004 Athens Olympic games in the same event, Liu is officially out of the Olympics for the second time in a row after having to bow out in Beijing in 2008 because of an Achilles injury.

After Liu fell, he immediately started rubbing the same Achilles that gave him problems in Beijing. After getting up, he hopped around on one foot to the tunnel away from view of the fans, but came back out and hopped the distance of the 110 meter track to kiss the last hurdle, and say goodbye to his competitors.

Click here for more compelling photos in the forum of Liu Xiang after falling, thanks to Raymond.