As many of you know, Yao Ming owns his old basketball team, the Shanghai MAXXIS Sharks. MAXXIS is a Chinese tire company that is obviously the team’s sponsor.

Earlier this week, Yao and MAXXIS announced the launch of a “Cheer for Earth” initiative to help reduce carbon emissions through fuel efficiency.

Because tire pressure has an impact on fuel efficiency, MAXXIS is offering free tire pressure checks and tire inflation at more than 1,000 stores throughout China in July and August. More than 150,000 customers have taken advantage of the promotion to date, saving an estimated 61,965 tons in carbon emissions.

Who said China doesn’t care about it’s carbon footprint? This MAXXIS initiative may be small in relation to all of the carbon that China emits, but at least it gives you a glimpse within the country that there is acknowledgment more needs to be done.

For more photos from the press conference, click here.

Raymond reports that Yao Ming told Sohu.com in an interview a couple of weeks ago that he would like to start playing the game of golf. Many people scoffed at the idea of Yao being able to play the game very well since he is so tall.

Well, we have some proof that Yao is serious about it. Checkout the photo below taken at the Shanghai’s Sheshan International Golf Club over the last few days.

Actually, the way he is addressing the ball looks pretty good for a starter. You can tell he’s getting some good instruction.

Raymond also reports that Yao recently moved to a new house in the Song Shan District from his old Xuhui District. Sheshan (and the golf club) is in the Song Shan District and is known for its luxurious houses and villas, as well as its great view of the Huangpu River.

After making his retirement official about 10 days ago, it’s clear that Yao still remains a valuable spokesperson for Chinese companies.

Raymond reports in the forum that just a short time after Yao made his retirement announcement, on July 27th Yao continued to fulfill his commercial endorsement commitments for China Life Insurance. The company announced that despite Yao now being retired, they are going to extend his endorsement contract (terms unknown) when his current contract expires.

As China Life’s Global Ambassador, Yao made an appearance at the opening ceremony of the annual 3rd China Life Insurance Summer Love Camp in Xian of Shaanxi.

About 50 surviving orphans from the Szechuan Wenchuan earthquake, Qinghai Yushu earthquake and Gansu Zhouqu landslide are taking part in a 6-day summer camp. Accompanied by volunteers, these orphans will tour the 2011 World Horicultural Expo, visit the Terracotta (one of the 8 Wonders of the World) as well as the Ming Dynasty City Wall Ruins.

For more photos and details of Yao at the opening ceremony, click here.

The next day (July 28th), Yao flew back to Beijing from Xian and participated in the product launch for Beijing UniStrong Science & Technology Co Ltd, a high-tech company specializing in Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies.

Yao serves as the company’s official image spokesperson (and actually is their 4th largest shareholder when Beijing Unistrong went public and got listed in the Small and Medium Enterprise board of the Shenzhen stock market). Yao has been a spokesperson for Beijing Unistrong ever since 2005, and his endorsement contract was extended for another 5 years back in 2010.

The product they launched is called China Position, a cloud computing cross-platform, cross-network, cross-industry technology platform claimed to be the first commercially viable cloud computing-based application in China that marked the entry of China’s satellite navigation industry into the “Cloud” era.

For more photos from the product launch and the product itself, click here.

It’s not much of a surprise, but it was confirmed Yao will not be playing for the Chinese National Team again, including the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Bummer for Chinese hoops fans.

On a lighter note, Yao received many awards from various Chinese sports groups a couple of days ago at a ceremony in Beijing attended by about 200 people.

Many top sports officials were there as well as some of Yao’s former coaches from the Chinese National Team. Yao received the following awards:

– The State General Administration of Sports awarded him with a Sports Honorary Medal
– The Chinese Olympic Committee awarded him with a Chinese Olympic Gold Medal
– The Chinese Basketball Association awarded him the China Award for Outstanding Contribution to Basketball, and made him an Honorary National Team member for Life (which is stitched on to the jersey above)

Click here for more photos from the event and Raymond’s report in the forum.

Yao Ming was finally able to enjoy some leisure activities after his retirement announcement on Wednesday, followed by many interview requests the next couple of days afterwards.

So on Friday night, Yao took his family and good friend Andy Yao (who came over from Houston for the retirement announcement) to the “Artistry on Ice” show, an annual tour of some of the world’s best figure skaters.

Also attending the show was Sarah Jessica Parker, who is visiting Shanghai and is a fashion consultant for the ice show.

As seen by the photo below, Parker snaps photos of Yao just like any fan would, giggling like a schoolgirl. It’s really interesting to see even a big Hollywood celebrity going nuts when seeing or meeting Yao.

Like we mentioned earlier in the week, even though Yao is retired, we plan to continue running YaoMingMania and covering Yao because his influence extends far beyond basketball. Parker’s reaction here confirms that.

Click here for more photos of Yao at the event with his family, Yao, and SJP.

Many of you perhaps saw the photo on Wednesday we posted of Yao Ming’s old friend and translator Colin Pine at the retirement announcement press conference. If you weren’t aware, Yao asked Pine to translate his words into English for him (so that Yao wouldn’t have to repeat himself in English). You can see the entire press conference video on NBA.com by clicking here.

It was great to see the two sitting together again, just like old times when Pine translated for Yao during his first couple of seasons in the NBA. Pine has been living and working in Shanghai the past few years.

Pine later was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal’s China blog, which you can check out here. In this blog post, Pine responds to several questions, including how he was touched that Yao asked him to translate for him at the press conference, which he wasn’t expecting.

Since Yao confirmed his retirement on Wednesday, many pieces have been written about Yao Ming’s career. YaoMingMania has been directing you to some of these items, and came across a few more that stand out above the rest.

The first is this blog post from one of two Americans who probably has known Yao longer than any other American: “Team Yao” member Bill Sanders, Chief Marketing Officer for Bill Duffy & Associates (a.k.a. BDA Sports), which represents some of the NBA’s top players.

Sanders blogs about the current mood at BDA’s offices around Yao’s retirement, the time he first met Yao in China back in 2000, what it was like during the whirlwind days of Yao’s first couple of years in the NBA (which YaoMingMania covered in detail back then), and much more. Check it out here.

Sanders also tweeted about this insightful article from the LA Times about how Yao’s retirement will leave China with a gaping void in their international “charm campaign,” and this NY Times article about the state and future of Chinese basketball with Yao now retired.

All we can say is that China has alot of work to do to make up for the loss of Yao from the world basketball stage.

Yao Ming made it official today in Shanghai today that he is retiring. You can read the transcript below, and check out all the photos from the press conference by clicking here.

In a surprising twist given the strictness from the NBA regarding teams communicating with its players during the lockout, Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey attended the press conference. There was speculation that even in retirement, the Rockets could not speak with Yao, even after he officially retired. It’s good to see the NBA lightened up a bit for this important occasion, with even David Stern wishing Yao well through a statement.

Esteemed Director Li Yuyi, distinguished guests, friends in the media.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Raymond just reported in the forum that Yao will hold a press conference on July 20th to announce his future career plans.

Based on this information, it’s pretty safe to say that Yao will make formal his retirement announcement during this press conference. If he wasn’t going to retire, you would expect that he would clear it up right away. But we’ll see…

Here’s the announcement in Chinese and English:

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2011?7?9? ?????????20????????????????????????????????????

To all reporters and friends, Ni Hao !!!

July 9, 2011 in Beijing.

Yao Ming will hold a press conference in Shanghai July 20th when he will talk about his future career plans.