As you may already know, Yao went to London to be a CCTV5 television commentator for Chinese basketball games. Unfortunately, the Chinese team lost all 5 of their games at the Olympics by an average of 25.2 points.

After their last defeat against Great Britain that knocked the Chinese out of the Games, Yao rushed down to interview and console Chinese player Wang ZhiZhi, who probably played in his last Olympic games.

Click here to see more photos of Yao and Wang ZhiZhi, courtesy of Raymond in the forum.

Meanwhile, Yao was recently asked about some of the controversies that had fallen upon some Chinese athletes in other Olympic sports. Regarding the amazing performance by Chinese woman swimmer Ye Shiwen, whose time in the final 50 meters of her 400m medley was quicker than U.S. winner Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps in the men’s competition, Yao responded to accusations from people like American coach John Leonard (not part of the US Olympic team) that it was “impossible” without some kind of doping to help her.

“Ye jumped out from nowhere to take away the glories that the Americans thought belonged to them for a long time,

“It’s not a good feeling, same feeling for us if someone takes away the gold medal from the Chinese on table tennis. But I think the Americans were not gentlemen when they said like that.”

“I can understand the Americans, who dominated the pool for decades. It’s a common reaction. It happened when (Jamaican sprinter) Usain Bolt emerged, and it happened again on Ye.”

Yao also commented on the two Chinese badminton players, Yu Wang and Wang Xiaoli, for being two of eight players disqualified from women’s doubles competition for trying to lose matches. The top seeds were among four pairs who tried to lose their final group matches to secure a favorable quarter-final draw. But many observers criticized the unusual pool format as open to manipulation. Yao stated…

“Same kind of things happened in basketball. It’s a simple question. Is the match-fixing scandal right? Does a gold medal value more than anything else?”.

“My stand is clear, and I accept different opinions. People have different attitudes to the Olympics and I must say some sports need to polish the rules.”

“I feel really sorry for the punished players. They are the victims.”

Click here for the entire article regarding Yao’s comments.

Now that the Chinese have been eliminated from basketball competition, Yao will not continue commenting on any of the remaining basketball games. Raymond reports that Yao will probably go to Africa this week for some United Nations environmental and wildlife protection campaigns and activities.

In cased you missed it, here’s a video from a Taipei news station reporting on the crowd frenzy over Jeremy at a Nike event in Taipei on Saturday.

The Wall Street Journal also has a great interview of Jeremy in Taipei right here. There were two quotes that I thought were really poignant:

“What I have done is nothing compared to what Yao has done. He has done a lot for me, actually. What he did throughout his career helped me a lot,” said Lin.

and this one…

While acknowledging that Asian basketball players in the U.S. may be treated unfairly in some ways, he said being Asian in a sport with few Asians has its advantages.

“No one expects anything from you and no one thinks you are going to be good,” he said. “Why this is an advantage is that everyone takes you lightly, and the minute you step out into the court and you give it to them, you will immediately earn their respect. But no one is going to give it to you right away. Not in America at least,” he said.

Jeremy Lin arrived in Taipei on Saturday to start a one-month tour of Taiwan and China. He will be in Taiwan for 2 or 3 days before departing for mainland China where he will be visiting 3 or 4 cities for his sponsors Nike and Volvo.

Here’s a photo of Jeremy landing at the Taiwan airport at 5:00am in the morning after a long flight from San Francisco.

Hundreds of diehard fans waited for him through the night at the airport. It would have been tough for Jeremy to meet with them after such a long flight, so he went straight to the hotel. But he did record a short video on his mobile phone, and asked China Airlines to play the video in the airport to thank his fans.

Later in the day, Jeremy went to a secondary school (Nan Shan) where he went through basketball drills for 4 hours. Check out the madness at the school as he arrived:

Later on Friday night, Jeremy made an appearance at a Nike event to launch his new line of Hyperdunk shoes.

Thousands of fans showed up hours early to get a good spot at the Nike event.

Some fans also showed up early to buy the first official Jeremy Lin Rocket T-shirts.

Click here for more photos of Jeremy’s Friday activities in Taipei.

On August 19th – 22nd, he will hold a basketball clinic in Dongguan for 50 kids who were hand picked from 8 basketball camps held in the past 3 months in multiple Chinese cities.

On August 25th, he’ll leave China for Hong Kong for a couple of days to speak at the Asia World Expo to give a Christian-oriented speech about “The Story Behind Linsanity.” Afterwards, he will be flying back to Taiwan where he will conduct another basketball clinic from August 27th – 30th. After a couple of more activities on September 1st and 2nd, Lin will fly back to the U.S.