Yao is back in Houston for the next two weeks to attend All-Star game festivities next week as well as to take part in Chinese New Year celebrations.
He met with the Rockets’ CEO Tad Brown Tuesday morning to discuss details of the retirement of his jersey, then met with some of the current Rocket players, including Jeremy Lin.
The NY Times posted this article on Sunday about how much Jeremy Lin is enjoying being out of the spotlight this season. Jeremy was quoted Sunday morning at the Rockets’ shootaround in Los Angeles with the following:
“It’s really, really low-key. And it’s really peaceful. When I walk around, I don’t wear a hat or glasses or anything — unless I want to.”
I like how Jeremy is able to focus more on his game this season in Houston. He’s had some good moments, and also some bad moments that probably has made his doubters who predicted he wouldn’t be as great as last season in New York feel vindicated, and that it’s time to try winning some money at Party Casino or something.
But I believe once the stable of new Rockets players get to know each other better, start developing some confidence, and Kevin McHale gets back to the team from his leave of absence, Jeremy’s point totals and shooting percentage will start going up, and the turnovers will go down. He’s too smart and too much of a hard worker to be a disappointment.
A few days ago, GQ China announced their 2012 Men of the Year awards. Twenty international and Chinese personalities were picked. Jeremy Lin was picked as Man of the Year in the category of Best International Sports Personality.
Click here for more photos of Jeremy from the GQ China photo shoot.
Yao also received an award for his contribution to philanthropic and charity efforts. We don’t believe Yao had photos taken by GQ, but if we come across any, we’ll post them here.
Some of the other personalities awarded were:
- Tony Leung Chiu Wai: Man of the Year: Best Actor
- Anthony Wong Yiu Ming: Man of the Year: Best Musician
- Nicky Wu Jilong: Man of the Year: Best Contemporary Artist
- Feng Xiaofeng: Man of Year: Newcoming Actor
- Tadao Ando: Man of the Year: International Cultural Exchange
- Lapo Elkann: Man of the Year: Best Dressed
- Sun Yang: Man of the Year: Best Sports Personality
Since our last update on Jeremy Lin’s trip in China and Taiwan, you won’t believe how busy he has been!. Here’s a rundown of what he’s been doing over the past couple of weeks.
Jeremy continued to run his 4-day basketball camp in Dongguan through August 22nd.
Click here for tons of photos of Jeremy at the camp.
On the evening of August 22nd, Jeremy made his first trip to Hong Kong, and the next day (August 23rd) he spent his 24th birthday there. Check out the cool cake below.
On August 24th, Jeremy made his first public appearance in Hong Kong to share his amazing story of success with hundreds of Hong Kong’s youth at “K11,” the world’s first art gallery and shopping mall.
The event was sponsored by New World Group, one of Hong Kong’s leading conglomerates, which launched a new community program called New World Springboard to help young people pursue their dreams through sports participation.
During the Q&A session, Jeremy was asked if he has any preference in the nationality (American, Taiwanese, Chinese or Hong Kong) of a future wife. He said he doesn’t care where his future wife comes from as long as she loves God, and loves serving other people.
Jeremy also shared how he spends his free time, and he responded with the following chart (basketball 5 hours per day, family time & relaxing 3 hours, and Bible reading 30 minutes).
Sohu.com reported that throughout the summer, Jeremy has been working on improving the dexterity of his left hand, using it to dribble, penetrate and pass more. He also told reporters that he lost some weight to reduce the pressure on his knees, but he has become much stronger and muscular in his upper body.
Click here for more photos of Jeremy at the New World Springboard event.
Jeremy was also the main attraction at a Christian testimonial sharing session titled “The Story Behind Linsanity” that had 8,000 attendees at the Asia World Expo in Hong Kong.
After staying in Hong Kong for a few days, Jeremy flew back to Taiwan where he started another basketball camp on August 27th, this time in Taipei. Compared to the camp he held in Dongguan, China, this one seemed oriented to having more fun because it had younger boys and girls participating.
Click here for more photos from the camp in Taiwan.
The next day after the camp opened, Jeremy worked out for more than two hours with former Golden State teammate David Lee, who also came to Taiwan for the camp.
Later, Jeremy took Lee and his fiancee to the famous Shihlin Night Market to do some prawn fishing where Jeremy snagged 11 prawns!
On August 29th, Jeremy and David Lee made a surprise visit to some basketball courts in Taipei (the XinSheng Courts) around 10:00pm and played 4-on-4 against three other teams. The two other players on Jeremy’s team was his brother Joshua, and Jeremy’s strength & conditioning coach Josh Fan.
Click here for more photos from the street ball session. And here’s a video featuring the guys going to the playground and hooping it up:
On his next day of training, Jeremy was seen putting his hands in a bucket of rice grain.
He said he does this 3-4 times a week because it strengthens his fingers to help reduce the chance of injury, and helps him with his finger rolls. He said a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL also do this.
On August 31st, Jeremy went to a primary school in Hualian where he played with 200 boys and girls, who are either orphans or from poor families.
You can tell Jeremy really loves being with the kids. Click here for more photos of Jeremy at the school.
On September 1st, Jeremy attended the launch of the Volvo V60 in the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall.
Click here for more photos of Jeremy at the Volvo event.
Jeremy made his last public appearance in Taiwan on September 2nd at a religious testimonial sharing event in Xinzhuang Stadium (Taipei Baby Dome) in New Taipei City, sponsored by GOODTV of Taiwan.
The stadium was filled to full-capacity and was streamed over the Internet to about 700 religious communities all over Taiwan, and even to Malaysia, Singapore, and the U.S.
One of the miracles that Jeremy shared was how he grew to be 5 inches taller and 30 kilograms heavier than the next person in his family. Click here for some of the other miracles he mentioned, and for more photos from the event.
On Monday, September 3rd, Jeremy flew back to Guangzhou (in China) so he could attend the opening ceremony the next day of the KFC-China national youth 3-on-3 basketball tournament. Below is a photo of Jeremy signing a jersey of a member of last year’s championship team.
This will be the ninth year of the tournament, which will be a record breaking year with more than 33,300 participating teams with more than 176,800 young players competing for the national championship in over 500 cities.
Jeremy was invited to speak a few words of encouragement for the young players. He told them to place an emphasis on both their academics in addition to basketball. He said basketball is very important to him, but an injury could end his professional career at any time. He said that’s why it’s good to have academic achievements and degrees that one can fall back on when a player’s career is over.
Click here for more photos of Jeremy at the tournament.
Following the event, after a long one-month trip in China and Taiwan, Jeremy and his colleagues returned to the U.S…probably very exhausted mentally and physically.
Thanks go to Raymond for helping put all of this information together.
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 追逐梦想超越自我.
Click here and here for more photos of Jeremy at his basketball camp.
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) 中国达人秀 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.
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.
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.
