A behind-the-scenes profile of the Chinese NBA star and the factors that drove his career reveals how his basketball player parents were brought together by Chinese officials intent on creating Olympic athletes, his role as a corporate pitchman, and the struggle between China and America over his NBA draft, in an account that simultaneously traces the life of fellow athlete Wang Zhizhi. 50,000 first printing.
In 2002, Yao Ming became the NBA's first foreign #1 draft pick and a media sensation. Sports writer Ric Bucher was the only American reporter with unrestricted access to Yao's first year in the NBA. Now available in paperback, Yao: A Life in Two Worlds captures Yao's private story and traces his remarkable journey from Chinese success story to international icon. Whether winning over skeptical teammates, or treading lightly with ever-watchful Chinese officials, Yao reveals the many challenges he has faced with delicacy and humor. Spanning sports, politics, business, and popular culture, Yao's fascinating memoir reveals the humble, profoundly likeable young man behind the myth.
From the former New York Times Beijing bureau chief comes a closely observed story of a struggling Chinese basketball team and its quixotic, often comical attempt to make the playoffs by copying the American stars of the NBA. When the worst professional basketball team in China, the Shanxi Brave Dragons, hired former NBA coach Bob Weiss to improve its fortunes, the team's owner, Boss Wang, promised that Weiss would be allowed to Americanize his players by teaching them "advanced basketball culture." That promise would be broken from the moment Weiss landed in China. As we follow this team of colorful oddballs on a fascinating road trip through modern China, we see Weiss learn firsthand what so many other foreigners there have discovered: that changing China happens only when and how China wants to be changed.
"A major contribution to the study of global events in times of global media. Owning the Olympics tests the possibilities and limits of the concept of 'media events' by analyzing the mega-event of the information age: the Beijing Olympics. . . . A good read from cover to cover." —Guobin Yang, Associate Professor, Asian/Middle Eastern Cultures & Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University From the moment they were announced, the Beijing Games were a major media event and the focus of intense scrutiny and speculation. In contrast to earlier such events, however, the Beijing Games are also unfolding in a newly volatile global media environment that is no longer monopolized by broadcast media. The dramatic expansion of media outlets and the growth of mobile communications technology have changed the nature of media events, making it significantly more difficult to regulate them or control their meaning. This volatility is reflected in the multiple, well-publicized controversies characterizing the run-up to Beijing 2008. According to many Western commentators, the People's Republic of China seized the Olympics as an opportunity to reinvent itself as the "New China"---a global leader in economics, technology, and environmental issues, with an improving human-rights record. But China's maneuverings have also been hotly contested by diverse global voices, including prominent human-rights advocates, all seeking to displace the official story of the Games. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars from Chinese studies, human rights, media studies, law, and other fields, Owning the Olympics reveals how multiple entities---including the Chinese Communist Party itself---seek to influence and control the narratives through which the Beijing Games will be understood. digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative and accessible work exploring new media and their impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication. Visit the website at www.digitalculture.org.
In On Their Own Terms, Benjamin A. Elman offers a much-needed synthesis of early Chinese science during the Jesuit period (1600-1800) and the modern sciences as they evolved in China under Protestant influence (1840s-1900). By 1600 Europe was ahead of Asia in producing basic machines, such as clocks, levers, and pulleys, that would be necessary for the mechanization of agriculture and industry. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Elman shows, Europeans still sought from the Chinese their secrets of producing silk, fine textiles, and porcelain, as well as large-scale tea cultivation. Chinese literati borrowed in turn new algebraic notations of Hindu-Arabic origin, Tychonic cosmology, Euclidian geometry, and various computational advances. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, imperial reformers, early Republicans, Guomindang party cadres, and Chinese Communists have all prioritized science and technology. In this book, Elman gives a nuanced account of the ways in which native Chinese science evolved over four centuries, under the influence of both Jesuit and Protestant missionaries. In the end, he argues, the Chinese produced modern science on their own terms.
A sharply observed, hilarious account of Troost's adventures in China- a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained.
The book was selected as one of STRATEGY + BUSINESS Best Business Books of 2008. The book was also selected by Leadershipnow.com as one of The Best Leadership Books of 2008. One of the worlds most influential living management thinkers, Charles Handy has year-after-year been listed alongside business gurus including Peter Drucker and Tom Peters in the prestigious Thinkers 50 list. His views on management and life have inspired and enlightened others for decades. Now, in Myself and Other More Important Matters, the bestselling author of books including The Age of Unreason shares his special brand of wisdom, giving readers uncommon insight into business and careers...as well as the choices we all have to make in our lives. Handy draws on the lessons of his own experience to help readers move beyond the facts they learned in business school and reflect on their own individual management style. With the philosophical elegance and eloquence Warren Bennis has described as his trademark, Handy discusses how one should develop ones career goals in line with personal values and sense of ethics. Handy entertainingly recounts what hes discovered along his own international journey: from lessons his father taught him growing up in Ireland to what he learned in Borneo in his days working for Royal Dutch Shell to Italy, where he bought and fixed up an old house in Tuscany all the way to America, where recent corporate scandals have shaken our understanding of what is ethical and acceptable. Throughout the book, Handy asks us to look at the role of work in our life, and what we truly find fulfilling. It is hard to imagine a better or wiser guide to work and lifes big questions.
This book presents cutting-edge theories, techniques, and methodologies in the multidisciplinary field of high-speed railways, sharing the revealing insights of elite scholars from China, the UK and Japan. It demonstrates the achievements that have been made regarding high-speed rail technologies in China from all aspects, while also providing a macro-level comparative study of related technologies in different countries. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers, engineers, industrial practitioners, graduate students, and professionals in the fields of Vehicles, Traction Power Supplies, Materials, and Infrastructure.
A new breed of powerhouse companies from the emerging markets is catching their Western competitors off-guard. Household names of today - IBM, Ford, Wal-Mart - are in danger of becoming has-beens as these more innovative superstars rise to dominance, representing both an urgent competitive challenge and an unprecedented investment and business opportunity. Understanding how they have become world-class market leaders - and where they are going next - is crucial to an understanding of the future of globalization. Training his brilliant investor's eye on the top twenty-five of these emerging market companies, visionary international investment analyst Antoine van Agtmael takes readers into the boardroom suites and labs where they are outmanoeuvring their Western competitors. He reveals how these companies have made it to the top of the global heap, profiling major players such as China's Haier appliance manufacturer; Korea's Samsung; Brazil's Embraer jet maker; and India's Infosys. Divulging their strategies for future growth, he analyses how their rise to prominence will change our lives. His unique insights reveal both how we in the West can capitalize on the opportunities these companies represent while also mobilizing a powerful response to the challenges they present.
The riveting story behind NBA giant Yao Ming, the ruthless Chinese sports machine that created him, and the East-West struggle over China’s most famous son. The NBA’s 7‘6" All-Star Yao Ming has changed the face of basketball, revitalizing a league desperate for a new hero while becoming a multimillionaire pitchman for Reebok and McDonald’s. But his journey to America—like that of his forgotten foil, 7‘1" Wang Zhizhi—began long before he set foot on the world’s brightest athletic stage. Operation Yao Ming opens with the story of the two boys’ parents, basketball players brought together by Chinese officials intent on creating a generation of athletes who could bring glory to their resurgent motherland. Their children would have no more freedom to choose their fates. By age thirteen, Yao was pulled out of sports school to join the Shanghai Sharks pro team, following in the footsteps of Wang, then the star of the People’s Liberation Army team. Rumors of the pair of Chinese giants soon attracted the NBA and American sports companies, all eager to tap a market of 1.3 billion consumers. In suspenseful scenes, journalist Brook Larmer details the backroom maneuverings that brought China’s first players to the NBA. Drawing on years of firsthand reporting, Larmer uncovers the disturbing truth behind China’s drive to produce Olympic champions, while also taking readers behind the scenes of America’s multibillion-dollar sports empire. Caught in the middle are two young men—one will become a mega-rich superstar and hero to millions, the other a struggling athlete rejected by his homeland yet lost in America.
