Finding the Inner Balance (Feature) New Plans in the Works for Houston’s ‘Old Chinatown’ (in National News) APA Suspects Sought in Hate-Related Assault (in Bay Area News) Ultimate Diversions: ‘Warcraft III’: Blizzard Does it Again (in Business) Johnny Damon Key in Ending Yankees Dynasty (in Sports) Hot ‘n’ Sour Dish: Barbie Food, Anyone? (in A&E) Emil Amok: The Great Yellow Hope (in Opinion)

No. 1 NBA Draft pick Yao Ming towers over the Japanese team in last year’s World Games. Photo by The Associated Press.

The Great Yellow Hope

You may not see an Asian male face anchoring the local TV news, but some of us will settle for the next best thing: An Asian male in the NBA slam dunking nightly on Sportscenter.

Talk about in your face.

Yao Ming, the highly-touted Asian basketball star, comes to the Bay Area this week as the “Great Yellow Hope.”

He’s playing for Team China in an exhibition game against a bunch of so-so NBA players (all of them millionaires) that make up Team USA. It’s a tune up for the World Championship tournament that begins later this month in Indianapolis. Which means no one really cares who wins or loses this week.

But it will be the first time in the Bay Area you can catch a glimpse of Yao Ming. And I’m betting a jock strap there’s more than a handful of you who want to see if the first pick in this year’s NBA draft is for real. APA guys top the list of those who want this guy to make it bad, real bad.

If you played on the Lowell High School 115s basketball team, you know what I mean.

If you’re fans of former SF police chief Fred Lau, the man who used gravity boots in an attempt to beat the SFPD’s height limit, you know what I mean.

If you’re an APA guy who is tired of the stereotypes that have hampered Asian males, you know what I mean.

Yao Ming creates an altogether new stereotype. Who knows what was in his tea or tofu. The guy’s 7 feet 5 inches. At that height, Yao doesn’t need to jump. He’s got two feet on the average Asian guy. He doesn’t even need the lazy Susan at the Chinese banquet table. The man’s got wing-span.

My favorite Yao Ming picture is one where he’s playing against some Japanese guys in the World Games last year. He’s just holding the ball above their heads as if he’s just toying with a few Lilliputians.

It’s the kind of authority that most APA guys can only envy. They’re usually not the big guy with the rock over their head. But if Yao becomes a big star playing for the Houston Rockets next season, we could be in a whole new universe. With the media and the NBA’s marketing machine behind it, the new stereotype could trickle down to us shorter folks in society in nothing flat.

Can’t you see the shirts now: YO YAO!

Go ahead be skeptical. That’s your right. After all, there was a fellow who came into the NBA in 2000 that we all had high hopes for. That would be Wang Zhi-Zhi, the center for the Dallas Mavericks.

Wang Zhi-Zhi?

Sure.

We rooted for him too. But he never got off the bench long enough for the water to boil the noodles limp. Is Yao another Wang?

Nope.

Yao’s a bigger Wang. Wang’s practically shrimpy at an even 7 feet. Yao’s heavier too at 290 pounds. But stretched out, he could still use another 10 or so pounds to lose that emaciated Asian look and become an immobile Shaq-like big man.

What’s more, he seems to have a bit of a personality.

Here’s a Yao chat on NBA.com:

Question: Can you fully comprehend what being the No. 1 pick in the NBA means to you and to Chinese basketball?

Translator: This is now a new start in my basketball life. This is a new league in front of me for me to play, so it will be a new challenge for me. I know there will be a lot of difficulties in front of me, but I’m confident that I will learn from the NBA and improve myself and improve Chinese basketball in the future.

Question: How are you feeling right now?”

Translator: I am excited for the new NBA season to start. I will try my best to learn about the team and learn about all my new teammates, so I will do my best for the Houston Rockets.

Doesn’t he sound like he’s part machine?

But Yao did answer one question without an interpreter: Do you have any words for the United States?

To which he replied all by himself, “I am very happy to join the Houston Rockets. Hi Houston, I’m coming.”

By his terse comments, one wonders just how much the Chinese have their mitts around Yao’s you-know-whats. Which brings up my only real reservation about the emergence of Yao as our new Asian Pacific American male icon.

The guys an immigrant. In truth, he’s even less than that. He’s really just a “borrowed” guest worker from China and his Chinese pro team, the Shanghai Sharks. In other words, he’s a foreigner. Like your cousin Lincoln. Only bigger.

For APA guys, this has always been the drawback. Sure your family’s been in America for three or more generations, but to this day, there’s still the feeling that an Asian face is still Asian, not American. Wen Ho Lee was a naturalized American citizen, but still viewed as foreign.

So shouldn’t we just root for Shaquille O’Neal and let the Yao be? Maybe what emerges from Yao’s presence is a form of the good kind of globalization.

Where Yao becomes a human bridge between China and the NBA. We don’t need the Chinese to build any railroads in Utah. But the NBA sure is on an imperial mission. It wants a world presence and 1.3 billion Chinese to sell “Yo Yao” shirts. China wants their national team center to develop against the U.S.’s dominant players. There’s the basic win-win.

Yao could be a bum, in which case, he can go back to China. But if he’s a stud like we all hope, and undergoes what’s sure to be a sexy American marketing makeover, what he does for APA male self-esteem should be big. Really big.

WHAT I REALLY THINK: Should we go to war with Iraq? No. But here’s a more local issue for APAs in the Bay Area worth a fight, especially if you’re a listener of KPFA radio. Kayumanggi Kaloy aka “Bruddah K” (Klay), the Filipino American radio producer of “Roots Kommunikations, and the only Filipino American on the KPFA staff, could become the latest casualty at the non-commercial station. What is it with KPFA? A guy spends 17 years working there, most of them on a graveyard shift, gets limited room to develop, and now is threatened with job loss? You’d expect that stuff from a commercial station, not from a place that calls itself “Free Speech Radio.”

Tipping allowed: emil@amok.com.