David Beckham, China's first ambassador for soccer, arrived in Beijing on Wednesday morning to a, well, David Beckham welcome. Fans waited for hours for him to arrive to Shijia Hutong Primary School, where he played soccer in dress shoes and a butoned up shirt. He also kicked the ball around at the FC Guo'an practice facility. The above video is him arriving at the scene.
The story of China’s World Baseball Classic win against Brazil begins like any other: on a dirt field. “The field took just four months to build amid the high-rise apartment blocks on the outskirts of Changzhou,” begins Justin Bergman’s story in Time two years ago. This was Major League Baseball’s second training school, seeking to find Chinese... Read more »
Good news sports fans: some of the planet’s top athletes are planning preseason tours to Beijing and Shanghai. Let’s start with basketball, the most popular sport this country by some metrics*. For the first time ever, the Los Angeles Lakers are coming to China. They’re slated to play the Golden State Warriors on October 15... Read more »
The Chinese Basketball Association playoffs got underway Wednesday, and to discuss the teams and break down the matchups, we’ve invited the foremost English-speaking CBA expert, Jon Pastuszek, who runs the excellent NiuBBall. Our questions to him are in bold.
The wonderful folk of Koryo Tours, who aren't responsible for Dennis Rodman but is for so many other Westerners who visit North Korea, passed along this video recently of Americans playing basketball in the DPRK last June. It was the first ever "USA-North Korea basketball exchange."
"Well, I hope this opens up opportunities for the future," participant Luke Elie, founder of Coaches Team International, said. We wonder if he knew, eight months later, Rodman would be there.
Yi Ruilong, an extreme sports trailblazer in this country known as China's "first flying man," disappeared on Sunday evening after his hang glider crashed into remote Hanyuan Lake in Sichuan province. You can watch the video of his fateful accident above, in which he loses control while trying to complete a 360-degree turn.
Witnesses aren't sure whether Yi died on the spot, but search crews found no signs of the 70-year-old until two days later, Tuesday night, when they finally dredged up his body.
We were watching the CBA All-Star game on Sunday to see the best that Chinese basketball has to offer, and for the entertainment aspect, and the pageantry (it was a special Lantern Festival game), but, truth be told, what we really wanted was comedy, preferably one of errors, like last year.
The game didn't supply anything, but the dunk contest did. Oh did it ever.
Six months ago, seven-time NBA all-star Tracy McGrady shocked the basketball world when he signed a one-year contract with the Qingdao Double Star Eagles of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). With Stephon Marbury already setting the standard as the ultimate CBA success story, McGrady was expected to further raise the profile of the top league... Read more »
The latest penalties in China soccer’s match-fixing drama have been a long time coming – several players, officials and referees were already sent to prison last year – but as announced Monday, they were still fairly significant. In summary: Shanghai Shenhua stripped of the 2003 league title Two teams docked 6 points each going into... Read more »
We’re given no details as to why Jeremy Lin posed with former NBA All-Stars Dikembe Mutombo and Yao Ming, but when you stand next to people who are 7-foot-2 (2.18 meters) and 7-foot-6 (2.29 meters), you’re bound to look, in Lin’s words, “like an infant,” even if you stand a whopping 191 centimeters. Keep your... Read more »
