Yao Mania

'Marriage' category archive

Yao gets married today

Monday, August 6th, 2007
by John

Raymond, our correspondent in China, has been monitoring all the online Chinese newspapers today as Yao Ming and Ye Li got married.

Yao Ming and Ye Li have their wedding photos taken a few days before their wedding ceremony on August 6th, 2007.

You can check out all the wedding coverage here in the YaoMania! forum.

Here’s a report from the Xinhua news service.

NBA star center Yao Ming has got married to his long-term girlfriend Ye Li in their hometown Shanghai on Monday.

A low-key wedding ceremony was held in the five-star Shangri-La Hotel in Shanghai, and only some 70 family members and relatives were present, according to Zhang Chi, press representative of TeamYao, which manages Yao’s career.

The ceremony, which lasted three hours, included exchange of rings, offering tea and flowers to parents to express gratitude, and sharing of a wedding cake, according to Zhang.

About 100 security guards had worked for the nuptial in which only 10 dinner tables were arranged with each costing 12,300 yuan (1,618 U.S. dollars), local media reported.

Yao, 27 and 2.26-meter-tall Houston Rockets star, and his bride Ye, a 26-year-old, 1.9-meter-tall player on China’s national women’s basketball team, received their official marriage certificate in Shanghai’s Xuhui District on Friday.

On July 31, the couple had been spotted near the Taihu lake in Lin’an of east China’s Zhejiang Province taking wedding photos.

According to Yao’s autobiography, “Yao: A life in two worlds”, he met Ye in 1999, when Yao was playing for the Shanghai Sharks. Their romance went public when the two were seen walking hand-in-hand at the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Yao will fly to Beijing Tuesday to attend celebrations for the one-year countdown to the 2008 Olympics on August 8, Zhang said.

Yao and Ye Li get wedding photos taken

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007
by John

They haven’t got married yet, but Yao Ming and his fiancee Ye Li got their pre-wedding photos taken early Tuesday morning at a resort called Taihu Yuan Resort in the city of Lin’an, just 2 hours from Ye Li’s hometown.

Yao apparently liked the scenery so much, he asked about environmental protection measures like the flow of tourists.

Click here for more photos from their session. Thanks go to Raymond for the photos.