This week Yao’s wine business announced a new wine called “Napa Crest” that will be cheaper than his first wine (that sold out). The wine launched this week in China, and will be available in the U.S. in January.

The Wall Street Journal wrote a very informational article about the new wine and Yao’s wine business, as well as the state of wine sales and consumption in China.

More details about Yao’s new wine can be found at the Yao Family Wines web site here.

In case you didn’t know, Jeremy Lin has been on a whirlwind tour of Taiwan and China the past couple of weeks.

Raymond has done an AWESOME job posting lots of stories, photos and video links of Jeremy’s trip in the forum. I was hoping I could post a summary of all of Jeremy’s activities, but the amount of content is so amazing, it would take me days to recap it all.

Instead, I just urge you to click here and scroll through all the photos and stories yourself to get a glimpse of what Jeremy has been doing (make sure to click on the additional page links at the bottom of each page — currently 7 pages and counting).

But I had to post at least one photo of Jeremy here. The one below is Jeremy with Rocket teammate Chandler Parsons holding Jeremy’s 25th birthday cake at a basketball camp they were conducting last week. Pretty cool design on the cake, huh?

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If you think Yao’s photo with J.J. Watt a few months ago made J.J. look small, take a look at this one of Yao with boxers Manny Pacquiao (who stands 5′ 7″) and Brandon Rios.

Photo: Chris Farina – Top Rank

Pacquiao and Rios were in China last week to promote their upcoming November pay-per-view fight in Macau.

This ABC news story appeared last week in the Bay Area after Yao visited his winery in Napa Valley. Check it out!

If the video player above doesn’t play the video, you can try viewing the video here.

Last week Jeremy Lin participated in the Steve Nash Foundation Charity Game (soccer), played July 14th in Los Angeles.

Jeremy was among a group of NBA players (like Jared Dudley, Klay Thompson), soccer stars (Robbie Rogers, Robbie Keane), and NBA writers (Marc Stein) invited to play soccer to raise money for Nash’s foundation.

But according to Orange County Register reporter Kevin Ding, the Rockets didn’t approve of Lin playing in the soccer match because of the risk involved, so he played for only a few minutes (for both teams).

However, Lin showed that he had some soccer skills by getting an assist to Klay Thompson for an opening goal. Nash’s team ended up beating Rogers’ team 5-4 with Nash scoring the winning goal.

Click here for more pics from the event.

You have probably seen some of the coverage from Saturday’s press conference and fan rally of Dwight Howard becoming a Houston Rocket, but it’s still worthy of covering here on YaoMania.

Yao was there to welcome him into the “Legacy of Bigs” in Houston. Below are some pics, along with links to more photos and slideshows.

Copyright 2013 NBAE (Photo by Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images)

Copyright 2013 NBAE (Photo by Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images)

If you want to see more slideshows from Saturday’s events, click here, here and here (courtesy Rockets.com, Sports790.com and the Houston Chronicle).

Yao has planned for awhile to fly from Beijing to Houston on Air China’s inaugural non-stop flight between the two cities, only the 4th U.S. city that Air China now flies non-stop from Beijing, behind New York, L.A. and San Francisco. So it’s kind of a big deal.

Since Yao is a goodwill ambassador for Houston, it made sense for Air China to invite him to fly on their first flight to Houston from Beijing. So this trip has obviously been planned for quite some time. But it’s great timing since Yao will be able to attend Dwight Howard’s first press conference on Saturday welcoming him as a Houston Rocket. That should be a pretty cool press conference since we understand Hakeem Olajuwon will also be there. Nice touch by these Rocket legends to be there to welcome Dwight to Houston.

Below are some photos that Raymond posted in the forum of Yao at the ceremony at the Beijing airport before he departed on his flight to Houston.

Click here for more photos from the Air China ceremony.

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.

Late last week Yao attended the “Artistry on Ice” show in Shanghai, which featured some of the top figure skaters in the world. This was Yao’s third consecutive year to attend the show, and he came with his wife Ye Li, actor and friend Deng Chao, and his daughter Amy (pictured at the bottom right).

This was the first time that Amy had been seen in public with his parents since Yao’s retirement from the NBA two years ago. She is growing up fast!

After the show, Yao went backstage to meet some of the skaters, like Canada’s Kurt Browning, who was the World Champion from 1989-1991 and 1993.

And checkout this photo of Yao with flamboyant American skater Johnny Weir.

Click here for more photos of Yao with his family, Yao with some of the skaters, and scenes from the show.