A few days ago Yao did a promotional program for the popular cookie OREO for Kraft Food’s Nabisco division in Shanghai. Yao is a spokesperson for the brand, and in the interview revealed a few things about his daughter Amy that we hadn’t heard before.

Yao said Amy hasn’t yet shown early signs of her parents’ athleticism, but does seem to have some musical talent, singing and swinging to the beat of music. Yao joked that Amy already has him beat in the music department.

When asked about his life after retirement, Yao said he is as busy as ever. The most enjoyable time of his day is dinner time where he can relax and enjoy time with his whole family together: his parents, his wife, Amy, and sometimes his wife’s parents as well.

Click here for more photos and information from the interview and the event. Thanks to Raymond in China for all the scoop.

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.

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.

Yao is in Athens for some of the Special Olympics (he’s a Global Ambassador for the Games), which just started this past weekend. Raymond has posted some great pics in the forum.

Former Rockets’ teammate Dikembe Mutombo is in Athens, too, since he’s a Global Ambassador for the Games. Both Yao and Deke played a little friendly game of one-on-one on Saturday.

Click here for more photos of Yao and Deke together.

Later, Yao participated in the Opening Ceremony of the Games.

Click here for some impressive photos from the Opening Ceremony.

The next day (Sunday), Yao went to go cheer on the Chinese Special Olympics basketball team.

For more photos of Yao’s activities on Sunday, click here.

Check this video out, too…

Here’s a new Chinese Coke commercial that just started airing in China on July 7th:

The first part of the following video is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the video above (spoken in Chinese). The white, bald guy lighting the Olympic torch with Yao is Yao’s trainer Anthony Falsone.

Finally, here’s a video of Yao and LeBron James that should be airing worldwide very soon:

Thanks always to Raymond in China for finding these vids.

Raymond found some photos on a Chinese Web site that were taken on the set for an Olympic Coke commercial featuring Yao. Click here for more photos from the set.

Below is a video of the commercial (click the little ‘play’ button in the lower left-hand corner). Yao appears at the very end of it. Note: the video is hosted in China, so for those of you watching it in the U.S., it may take awhile for the whole thing to load.

Yao Ming and the Chinese beat the Brisbane Bullets for the second game in a row by a wide margin Monday night, this time 82-62 in Zhuhai.

Both Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian didn’t have to play in the fourth quarter because of the blowout win. Both played 23 minutes and had similar stats: Yao had 17 points and 10 rebounds, while Yi had 18 points and 7 rebounds.

Click here for more photos and details from the big win.

After the victory, Yao took a red-eye flight from Zhuhai to Beijing to participate the next morning in the launch of a new Reebok campaign geared toward supporting Yao in his attempt to bring glory to the Chinese basketball team in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The campaign is titled “Fuel Yao’s Unlimited Power,” which sounds more like a Gatorade ad than a sportswear company campaign. But check out the duds that Yao wore in a photo session associated with the campaign…

To see more photos of Yao at the Reebok announcement and in his new Reebok clothes, click here. It’s pretty cool stuff.

Thanks always to Raymond for the new and pics.

On Tuesday Yao Ming became the global image spokesperson for the China Life insurance company. Add this to the other companies he added to his involvement the other day.

Click here for more photos from the press conference.

Yao Ming has been one busy fella the past few days. Not only has he been doing his training for the Chinese team, participating in the festivities and auction for the charity gala — and play in that game — he quickly moved from those activities into some commercial ones.

Below is a photo of Yao opening up his California Fitness concept in Beijing (click here for the article when it was announced in May), with participation in the launch of the fitness center by Jackie Chan and many of the players who came over from the U.S. for the charity game.

Before this event, Yao attended a ceremony held by Visa International and China Construction Bank to launch the CBC Visa Ming card, with Yao Ming also being named Visa’s global image spokesperson.

He also attended the press conference held between the NBA and KongZhong Corporation to announce a new mobile WAP-based service that will provide NBA fans in China with a broad range of content options including news, scores, editorial content, player interviews, TV schedules, wallpapers, ring tones, video clips and live NBA games.

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