The Year of The Yao

“The Year of The Yao” is a short documentary about Yao Ming, the what they said as an ‘export’ in a basketball history. “The Great Wall of Yao”, “The Ming Dinasty”, and many other superior nickname.

What makes me interested about this documentary is, I saw this very silent Yao. The man without words who lost in translation in the West country. I don’t know, it’s like one side that was a blessing. Represent his own country as a giant man with a very high skill of basketball. There’ll be no ‘china’ if there wasn’t because of Yao Ming. And in another side, a curse. “Yao Ming, from China..”, when somebody announced that name to become one of Houston Rockets chosen player, the stadium were goes like ‘UUUUUUUUUUUuuuuu…!!!’. And all I could see is, Yao Ming, a glimpse of smile on his face. A smile of ‘o, my name..’- smile. And his parents. A typical Eastern smile. Very polite, very shy, yet very warm. But what the ‘UUUUuuuu….’ People I mentioned before didn’t know is, Yao Ming’ll soon become a history.

Slide by slide the successful action of Yao were shown. And I was just like, damn man, this guy is ‘huge’! And I couldn’t stop starring my eyes on Yao. Until, it almost came to the top of the stories. Yao was getting tired. Tired of carry on the name of his country. Tired of being the ‘alien’ with only a translator whose also his very best friend in America. Yao often failed to dunk the ball and easily getting hit by his opponent. The worst is, when he had to deal with Shaq. AH! Poor Yao!

I can see the culture in this documentary. The east culture of being a tired one. We often just ‘sigh’ without words and just close our eyes, instead of cursing and swearing, and do vandalism action. I kinda forgot the end of the documentary but, what I remember is, his last smile before return to the West. The West, he said. Yes, because he is going back west to China. And when his translator were asked by reporters, “Can you ask Yao, what do you rally ‘mean’ to him.” And Yao answered, “I’ll recommend you to the next Chinese player.” And the room were laughing.