Yao was pretty busy a few days ago in China. On October 15th he held a press conference in Beijing with NBA commissioner David Stern and other head honchos to announce the creation of the “NBA Yao School” in Beijing.

The NBA Yao School, launching in February 2014, will provide after-school basketball training and fitness programs for boys and girls up to age 16 at all skill levels. The school aims to teach the importance of teamwork, leadership and communication in a fun basketball environment.

This announcement marks another milestone in the partnership between NBA China and Yao to develop youth basketball and create social responsibility programs in China. For more details about the NBA Yao School and video from the press conference, click here.

After the press conference, Yao attended a preseason game between Golden State and the L.A. Lakers in Beijing. Sitting next to him was friend and former Chinese teammate Sun Yue.

Yao ran into good friend Steve Nash at the game…

A couple of days later, Yao went to join the LA Lakers at an NBA Cares activity as well as an Open Day fan gathering at the Shanghai Oriental Sports Centre. Just like in Taipei, the target group for the NBA Cares activity was also 60 kids from the Chinese Special Olympics team.

Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and all the LA Lakers players were there to teach the kids basketball fundamentals.

Click here for more photos of Yao with Kobe, and other pics from the NBA Cares event in Shanghai.

This past weekend Yao went to Taipei to meet up with Jeremy Lin and the Rockets since they were in town to play the Indiana Pacers for a preseason game on Sunday, October 13th. Below are just a small sample of photos that are in the forum.

Here is Yao with Jeremy at a welcome reception on Friday…

It looks like Jeremy was able to get out and do some shopping without being swamped since he was in disguise…

But it looks like a couple of people identified him and were able to get a pic with him…

The next day, Yao, Jeremy and other Rocket players participated in an activity with mentally and physically disabled children who were part of the Chinese Taipei Special Olympics team…

Click here for more photos of Rockets with the Special Olympics kids

Yao was able to take some shots, like old times (Clyde Drexler and Robert Horry were also there)…

Later that night, Yao and the Rockets attended a fancy party at the Okura Prestige in Taipei. Below Yao shows how much he dwarfs Dwight Howard…

Click here for more photos from the party where it looks like a great time was had by many of the Rocket players, and even GM Daryl Morey.

Prior to joining his teammates at the Okura Prestige, Jeremy attended the premiere of his movie “Linsanity” in Taiwan….

A few days before on October 7th, the Rockets arrived in Manila to play their first preseason game against the Pacers (click here for more photos from their time in Manila)…

James Harden getting off the plane…

Jeremy takes a photo of fans who waited for him and the Rockets at the airport in Manila…

Jeremy sits on a jeepney…

Jeremy is surrounded by a throng of media at their practice court…

Click here for more photos of the Rockets in Manila.

Here’s a clip of Rockets head coach Kevin McHale’s comments about Jeremy Lin after his game in Manila in which the Rockets beat the Pacers…

Thursday was Yao’s 33rd birthday, and he spent his day filming part of a public service announcement (PSA) in London with Prince William and David Beckham to campaign against illegal wildlife products.

The messages will be broadcast globally in November but their target audiences are in China and Vietnam, countries which have large markets for products like rhino horn and ivory.

David Beckham told reporters:

“When I learned of the current poaching levels in Africa, I immediately agreed to help get this message out.

“It is shocking to think that we could lose these animals from the wild in our lifetimes.”

Yao said:

“We must reduce demand if we are going to save these animals.

“We made tremendous progress reducing demand for shark fin soup through a similar campaign and a government ban at banquets is also helping.

“Traders say shark fin demand has been cut by 50% or more. I hope we can do the same for ivory and rhino horn.”

Prince William later said at a conservation awards dinner:

“It is unfathomable to imagine a world in which children who have been born in the past couple of months may grow up in a world in which rhinoceros have ceased to live in the wild.

“The possibility of extinction is bad enough for one of our children growing up here in the West, who will never experience the magic of seeing a rhino; or even for my own little George, who Catherine and I very much hope to introduce to east Africa – a place we know and love – in the fullness of time.

“But for a child growing up in Africa and whose birth-right and economic inheritance these creatures are, it is nothing more than immoral that he or she may never experience what his parents and grandparents knew and treasured.””

A WildAid spokesman cited some alarming statistics:

“The ivory trade claims the lives of an estimated 25,000 elephants annually and according to South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs, as of September 5 at least 618 rhinos were killed for their horns in 2013, which may break last year’s record of 668 poached rhinos later this month.”

After the filming in London, Yao flew to Kenya to continue filming PSAs for WildAid.

A couple of weeks prior, Yao and his wife Ye Li participated in another public service event when he attended the premiere of a short film that they appeared in to warn the public against driving under the influence of alcohol. Click here for photos from the event.

The film was produced by the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau Traffic Police Corps, Chinese Wine Association and Anheuser-Busch InBev together.

AB InBev in a statement describes the film as, “Riding a light, humorous tone, the film tells how Yao, who plays the role of a designated driver, has to deal with a series of bad consequences from outsourcing his job on his wedding anniversary.”

What impressed Yao about his wife Ye Li in the film was not her acting ability, but the fact that she looks so great wearing makeup in the film, which she rarely has to do in her everyday life.

Yao said, “She looks gorgeous.”

Click here to see the short film.

On Monday night in Beijing, Yao’s Foundation had another charity game (more details of who it benefits are here) where NBA players like Joakim Noah, Luis Scola, Metta World Peace, Kyle Lowry, Ricky Rubio and others played the Chinese National Team. Published reports like this one revealed that Yao called Noah and MWP personally, not an assistant, to invite them to play.

Below are some photos from the night. Here’s a video that recaps some of the game, and Slam Online‘s coverage of the game.

Popular Brazilian soccer superstar Kaka of Real Madrid made an appearance and spoke to the crowd beforehand, and also talked with Yao. Since Kaka is a soccer ambassador for Brazil, he had flown to Beijing to promote an upcoming exhibition match between the Brazilian and Chinese national teams in September at the “Bird’s Nest.”

Tracy McGrady happened to be touring in China and had just flown in from Changsha, so he was too tired to play, but he did act as the “assistant coach” of Yao’s team.

Click here for more photos and details of the game, thanks to Raymond in the forum.

On Sunday night, the night before the game, Yao held a charity gala event sponsored by the Thaihot Group, a conglomerate in residential and commercial real estate development, chemicals, mining, finance and securities, and bio-medicine. The charity gala was held outdoor in Thaihot’s mega-project Courtyards by the Canal.

Click here for more photos of Yao and other NBA players at the charity gala.

Earlier in the day on Sunday, Yao and Joakim Noah visited a primary school for children of migrant workers in the Changping District in Beijing.

Yao and Joakim split themselves up into teams with the school children to see which team could make the most layups. Yao’s team lost, so Yao had to pay up on a bet and do push-ups.

Click here to see more photos of Yao and Joakim’s visit to the school, and here for a video of some of their visit.

Yao’s wife Ye Li and daughter Amy also visited the primary school with Yao and Joakim. Click here for lots more photos of Yao’s wife and daughter.

Before the weekend’s events, the Yao Foundation had a drawing for all ticket buyers where the winner would get their tickets delivered personally by Yao Ming himself. That’s exactly what happened on Thursday, June 27th. Check out the photos of below of Yao delivering the tickets and visiting with the winner.

Click here for more photos of Yao visiting the winner of the tickets in his home.

The Yao Foundation will be holding another charity game this coming Monday, July 1st in Beijing at the Mastercard Centre, where the 2008 Beijing Olympic basketball games were played.

So far five NBA players have committed to playing in the game against the Chinese National Team as the Chinese prepare for the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship to be played in Manila in early August. The NBA players who have committed to play on the “Yao Foundation” team are Joakim Noah, Metta World Peace, Kyle Lowry, George Hill, and Luis Scola.

You might remember that the Yao Foundation hosted two charity games 3 summers ago, one game played in Beijing and the other game in Taipei, which turned out to be very entertaining and successful in raising money to fund Yao Foundation charity initiatives.

The proceeds of this charity game will fund this year’s “Yao Foundation Hope Primary School Basketball Season” project, as well as funding the travel and expenses of school children of the Hope Primary Schools in poverty-stricken areas (and the Ya’an earthquake stricken area) to participate in the Yao Foundation Hope Primary School basketball season.

I didn’t think that Yao’s busy Thursday schedule could be topped on Friday, but it did. So much happened, it took me a day to go through all of the photos (after my machine crashed and took me all day to fix). Below is my report from Yao’s activities in Houston on Friday.

Yao first started the day by making an appearance at the Asia Society Texas Center in Houston where he participated in a luncheon limited to about 40 guests (to keep it very intimate) who purchased premium tickets to benefit the Asia Society to have a great lunch, and hear Yao be interviewed by Jay Williams. Williams was the player chosen #2 in the 2002 NBA Draft right after Yao was selected #1 by the Rockets. Williams is now an analyst for ESPN.

Below are some photos from the event. Also served was Yao Ming’s Cabernet Sauvignon from his Yao Family Wines winery.

If you want to get a good idea of some of what Yao discussed with Jay, you can check out this video of Yao that was filmed a few days before the luncheon.

There were many funny moments as Yao shared his dry wit with the audience. But one of the most touching moments of the discussion happened at the end when Williams corrected an earlier statement of Yao’s when Yao said that every NBA player is unique. Williams begged to differ, telling the audience that Yao is not only unique because of his talent, but because of his character as well.

Immediately after the luncheon, Yao went to the 5th Ward in Houston where the NBA was holding one of two events where NBA players in town for the All-Star game could help out in the community.

One of the funniest moments occurred when Dikembe Mutombo walked up and told some of the organizers and pointed to a project nearby that Yao should be working on because it was more difficult than the “easy” one he was working on.

Yao then moved over to help some other volunteers move a Jungle Jim that had just been assembled to a spot where it would be permanently placed. On his way over, he physically bumped into Tim Duncan (not pictured) from behind, which kind of surprised him, but was funny.

A few minutes later, Yao ran into Kobe Bryant and they exchanged a few pleasantries. Bryant seemed really happy to see Yao. That says a ton about how loved Yao is among his former competitors. It’s also refreshing to see a serious superstar like Bryant get a big smile on his face like this one that you rarely see from him.

It was at this event where I witnessed that people in Houston still go crazy when they see Yao. It’s really interesting to see how they react when they see him. The looks of awe on their faces when they see how big he is in person — or the smiles he brings to their faces — is amazing.

But unlike just a few years ago, it seems like just about everyone has a camera in their cellphone now. As a result, Yao is crowded by even more people because they all want a photo of him, and he was getting requests from tons of people (non NBA players) to have their photo taken with him.

To make things worse, many times the requestors would hand their camera phone to someone else to take their photo, but then that person has trouble understanding what button they needed to push on the phone to take the picture, thus making things very awkward and frustrating for people like me who want Yao to be able to move about freely in his life without being a walking tourist attraction.

Poor Yao. He handles it so well, but I just wish more people would respect his space, just wave hello to him, and not get so enamored taking a photo with him using their camera phones. I also wish some of the media wouldn’t keep asking him the same dumb questions that he’s probably answered a million times, like the question he was asked, “How does it feel to give back to the community?’

Yao obliged as much as he could with all of these requests, but it really was too much since it slowed him from moving more than a few feet without getting hit up for another request.

Finally, Yao’s final stop for the day was at Houston’s City Hall where he was officially proclaimed a Goodwill Ambassador for the City of Houston by the mayor. I was able to get some cool photos of Yao walking in downtown Houston and in front of City Hall in the city that has embraced him since 2002.

Yao then went inside City Hall where a throng of reporters, photographers and videographers were waiting for him to cover the ceremonial event. Check out the dozen or so cameraman in the back of the room that were there to cover it. You would think that this photo was taken in Shanghai or Beijing with all the media that was there!

Below Yao and the mayor talk as Rockets’ TV commentator Bill Worrell is about to start his opening remarks.

This presentation was a much bigger deal than you would first think since the mayor, Annise Parker, said she purposely has never given a key to the city to anyone since she has been mayor over the past 3 years! She takes it very seriously, but she knew Yao was a worthy recipient since she knows he will represent the city well.

Check out some video here of the mayor’s remarks.

A sweet impromptu moment occurred when a little girl of Asian descent (not pictured) in a Houston Rockets jersey brought a bouquet of flowers up to Yao while he was on stage. Yao holds the bouquet in the photo below.

Yao and his parents later signed a large poster of Yao.

Afterwards, the media surrounds Yao as you would expect.

As mentioned earlier today (Thursday), Yao went to the Houston Zoo Thursday afternoon as part of his continuing effort to educate young people about the importance of caring for endangered species and animals native to Africa.

Below is a pic of Yao meeting some of the kids.

The first stop was to visit the giraffes where Yao — when looking up to them — said something to the effect like, “Now I know how you guys feel when I enter a room.”

Yao moved on to feed them some lettuce, which they chowed down.

Yao then visited with the kids in front of a rhinoceros, and Yao knew his stuff since he became educated about them when he took his trip to Africa last summer.

This rhinoceros weighs over 3,000 pounds, but Yao knew that they really liked being scratched behind the ear (the softest skin on their body) like Yao is doing here. Yao even asked the kids if they would like to come up and touch the rhinoceros in the same spot, and many of them did.

Later Yao went over to the elephant pen where he did some tricks for Yao, like lifting his foot…

…and stand on its head…

After spending some time with the elephants and the kids, Yao went to a theater in the Zoo to talk to the children about the importance of wildlife preservation, and to watch a trailer for a WildAid film that’s scheduled to be released this Summer that chronicles Yao’s eye-opening trip to Africa last summer.

Later in the evening, Yao made an appearance at Jeremy Lin’s Foundation charity event at Houston’s Minute Maid Park (where the Astros play).

It was a long day for Yao, so after he left, Jeremy and Daryl played a mean game of table tennis.

Yao was a busy man on Thursday in Houston. In the early afternoon, he filmed a commercial in Houston with Jeremy Lin and Dikembe Mutombo for WildAid to promote wildlife preservation. Here’s a few pics:

Yao and Dikembe meet for the first time in a long time.

Reportedly the consumption of shark fin soup is down 50% since Yao took up the cause to prevent the massive killings of sharks for the delicacy. That said, Yao said that having Jeremy helping out will be a huge advancement since he is so well regarded in China where most shark fin consumption occurs.

Immediately afterwards, Yao went to the Houston Zoo to meet with children to educate them about rhinos and elephants. I’ll post those pics a little later.

There hasn’t been much to report about Yao over the past couple of months, but we finally have a few updates for you.

Last week Yao was in South Korea for the Special Olympics World Winter Games since Yao is still a Global Ambassador for the Special Olympics.

Below he is pictured taking part in a snowshoe relay, which he says is the first time he has tried a winter sport.

Also participating was his wife Ye Li, and international movie star Zhang Ziyi, pictured below.

Click here for more photos of Yao and others running in the snowshoe relay.

The next day Yao and his wife served breakfast for the special athletes.

Click here for more photos of Yao serving breakfast.

In case you missed it, last week the Washington Post published an interview with Yao. They provide a pretty good recap of Yao’s life after retiring from the NBA, his relationship with Jeremy Lin, and the state of basketball in China. It’s highly recommended reading. Check it out here.

Yao is now in Houston for next week’s NBA All-Star festivities where we plan to cover some of his activities here on YaoMingMania.

In addition, on Friday the 15th in Houston at the Asia Society of Texas, non-members can purchase tickets and hear about Yao’s career and his rise to global icon status during a private luncheon. Guests will also get a taste of the first vintages of the Yao Ming Napa Valley Cabernet. Click here for more details.

As you probably know, the NBA was in China last week and this weekend as the Clippers and Heat played an exhibition game in Beijing last Thursday, and played another game in Shanghai on Sunday.

Before Sunday’s game in a press conference with NBA commissioner David Stern and Yao Ming, Stern announced the NBA will be supporting Yao’s bi-annual Foundation charity game in China starting the summer of 2013. [Note: this story has been updated to reflect a bi-annual game, not an annual one as previously reported].

This is great news since a game wasn’t played this summer because of the conflict with the Olympic games in London, and Yao’s career-ending injuries and retirement impacted plans for a game in 2011.

The NBA also announced they have agreed to help players and coaches in the Chinese Basketball Association for the next 3 years.

This past summer, the NBA announced it will work in China with the Yao Ming Foundation on a broad and comprehensive partnership to further basketball participation, develop youth basketball, promote cultural exchange and conduct social responsibility programs in China. In addition, Yao will collaborate with the league to launch basketball and social development programs for Chinese youth through NBA Cares and the Yao Foundation for communities in need.

If you’re interested, here’s the video of the press conference where Stern and Yao talk about the benefits of the NBA working with Yao and basketball in China. Here are more photos from the press conference.