My 2002 Yao-ender

If you didn’t like 2002, don’t worry. It gets better. The best stories in 2002 were just seedlings.

They’ll blossom in 2003.

To mix metaphors and put it in news parlance, my favorite stories of 2002 have “legs.”

Especially my top story for the year, which has legs, arms, a funny haircut and stands 7 foot 5 inches.

Back when he was drafted, I said Yao Ming was going to be big, really big.

He’s going to be bigger than that.

After just a few months in the NBA, Yao’s got all the experts eating their old Chuck Taylor Converses. Those naysayers, the skeptics, are now admitting how stupid they were to doubt Yao’s talent. They dismissed him in the beginning, in the same manner as we’ve all been dismissed before.

You know that feeling. When they look at your appearance and don’t give you a break. You don’t fit in. You’re an outsider. You’re a (fill in the blank). They cut you no slack. Go back to where you belong.

You’d figure he did belong in the NBA, at 7 foot 5.

But sports fans have seen the likes of Georghe Muresan and Manute Bol before. Tall busts. Last I heard, Bol was trying to sell his talents as a hockey goalie. He had reached his natural goal of athletic sideshow.

Would Yao Ming be a Chinese Bol? Now there’s a thought. Would he be the second coming of Wang Zhizhi, the shorter 7 foot Chinese player who came a few years earlier and established himself in the NBA as little better than an Asian coat rack.

When I first saw him play, something told me that Yao was something else. He wasn’t Chung King. He was the real deal. I knew it would just be a matter of time and adjustment.

As I write, Yao is hotter than a red pepper. In the last week of December alone, he was averaging nearly 20 points a game, 20 rebounds, 4 block shots.

In the all-star voting, Yao trails Shaq O’Neal by just a few thousand votes. Want to make a statement? Go to www.nba.com/allstar2003/asb_rules.html and vote for Yao. You can even do it in Chinese.

Yao’s even picked up a nickname. They call him “Chairman Yao.”

Some writers are already talking about him as basketball’s Ming dynasty.

What does it all mean for 2003? Everything, if you’re an Asian Pacific American guy.

Here’s a big Chinese guy who plays in his underwear in America.

He’s going to be a sex star. And that’s going to mean one thing. Asian males are going to be hot. Tall, short. We all benefit. I want to know if he knows karate. The guy can be bigger than Bruce Lee ever was.

Of course, it also means a lot to the global game. The NBA in Shanghai? CCTV carried the game when Yao’s Rockets faced the Pacers in December and reached 287 million households. There are only 105 million households in all of America.

The NBA has already opened two offices in China. A radio show in Mandarin has begun in Houston. Put hoops on the pagodas in all the Chinatowns in America, my friend, Yao’s started a revolution.

But of course, there’s a catch. Yao is technically not an American. He’s not even an immigrant. He’s a foreign “performer.”

He’s got value in China and the U.S. He’s a citizen of the world, beyond our little ethnic designations. He belongs to all of us to imbue with some sense of value.

That’s the beauty of being 7 foot 5. There’s a lot of you to go around. Asian Pacific America should get a nice long ride from Yao, our Paul Bunyan myth come true.

And when he stuffs Shaq on SportsCenter, when the Rockets and Lakers collide on Jan. 17, you should record it for posterity. It will be a major turning point in APA history, a “golden spike” of the new millennium.

 

A&F BOYCOTT: How bad are we in need of a Yao fix? Real bad. Just look at the other top story of the year — the protests over those demeaning Abercrombie & Fitch Chinese laundryman t-shirts.

From a few college campuses in the West, the word spread via the internet, and suddenly there were protests from Palo Alto, Calif. to Cambridge, Mass.

What did it prove? That we’re not a dead community. Not by a long shot. We can let out a loud cry when we want.

But was it a success?

I don’t see the shirts anymore, but I still see some APAs wearing Abercrombie. Now there’s a faux pas. You shouldn’t mix fashion and politics. Why not? Every time you put on a crummy piece of merchandise that advertises A&F on your butt, sleeve, or wherever they put the logo, they own you. You paid to wear their advertisement. If A&F means “we slur Asians,” is that something you want to be a part of?

Overall, I have to think the boycott had some impact. The awareness, and the negative publicity, had to impair A&F profits. Since the spring, the company’s stock dropped from a high in the 30s to around 19. Coincidence, perhaps. But now that we know how screwy corporate accounting can be, APAs should just go ahead and take credit for A&F’s 30 percent stock hit. Hope you shorted it. The stock’s in free fall and looks to stay that way according to its chart. Don’t let up now. Make A&F continue to pay for its sins.

But remember the energy the community unleashed. We’re going to need it.

 

IMMIGRANT HARRASSMENT: The final big story is related to homeland security and its major impact on APA lives in 2002. Once seen as relatively minor, immigration infractions are now viewed as major crimes. Especially when an Asian country is linked to al Qaeda. For what other reason are Filipinos being deported by the dozen? They may be bureaucratic scofflaws, but they’re not terrorists. Still, they’re rounded up by dragnets, detained, jailed and deported.

Let’s see them apply the same treatment to immigrants from other parts of the world. Unfortunately, as the INS becomes more of a policing agency, we will see more of this type of story impacting Asians, South Asians, Arabs and Muslims. More deportations. More arrests. More curtailment of freedoms.

We’ll need a lot more than the Yao story to lift our spirits in 2003, and to make it a happy new year.

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Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.