Yao Ming in Reverse

The day after I returned to the US, I went to my neighborhood library to check out some books. After spending eleven months in Suzhou, I found myself drawn by an irresistible force to the library’s holdings on China, as if the books there could reclaim part of what I had loved and left behind. Quickly, I caught a conspiratorial scent in the air. There, along with the usual histories and travel guides, were a half-dozen books written by Americans warning of perils looming to the east, books with titles like China: The Dragon Rises and China: The Gathering Threat.

Perhaps it is my affection for Chinese people individually and collectively that makes me recoil from such texts. I’m too fond of China and the Chinese to begin to be frightened. Besides, while in China, I witnessed how little foreigners sometimes require to see signs of danger. There’s a popular Olympic t-shirt that people are wearing in China these days. The text on the shirt reads, “One China, One World, One Dream.” More than one foreigner has commented to me that this slogan proclaims China’s desire to take over the world. I find the conclusion highly dubious, for world conquest usually requires a little subtlety. If China truly aspired to conquer the world, it probably wouldn’t announce the intention on mass-produced t-shirts. Regardless, I’ve been too busy coming to terms with a real conspiracy to divert much attention to one that is largely fictitious.

It all happened because I am tall--that, and still mobile enough to play a little basketball. I have long arms, can shoot near the basket with my right or left hand, and can even hit a three-point shot now and then. In America, this adds up to mediocrity, and I’ve occasionally known how it feels to be the worst player on the court. But in China, the package made me a monster, a kind of Yao Ming in reverse. But as I recently discovered, excelling at something in a foreign country sometimes comes with a cost: a metaphorical if not literal pound of flesh.

Although basketball is an American invention, the sport is far more popular at present in China than it is in the United States, especially among students. At the college where I work in the US, I would sometimes go to the gym looking to get in a pick-up game and end up shooting free throws by myself. I never had a similar problem during my year in China. I lived a short bike ride from the campus of Suzhou University, where just about any time of day dozens of courts would be full of Chinese men playing basketball. On a clear and not so hot day, so many would be playing that it might take a while to get in a game. Even after the big snowstorm in February, the students had swept the court of snow and were playing again within a few days, braving the cold and the occasional patch of ice.

While there were a few other foreigners teaching and studying at the university, I never met another one on the basketball court. This, along with my height, made it impossible to blend in. The average Chinese man is seven or eight inches shorter than I, which meant that I was often guarded by players whose crowns came up to my chin. Sometimes I matched up against men close to my height--and, once, against one even taller--but typically my size gave me such an advantage that my shots were hardly contested. My worst enemy many days was myself.

You might think a tall waiguoren scoring at ease would breed resentment in China, but that was not initially my experience--at least not on the surface. Only once was an opponent openly hostile. This occurred when an undersized player grew increasingly frustrated with guarding me. Suddenly he accused me of throwing an elbow at him. In fact, he had run face-first into my back, and I could still feel the impact on my shoulder blade. When I told him so, the guy stormed off the court in the middle of game and sat sulking on his e-bike for an hour while I continued to play. As soon as I’d had enough, he began playing again. As in all things Chinese, I am limited, and talking trash on a basketball court is no exception. Da bao bao was all I could think of to say--big baby. In eleven months in China, that was the only occasion I had to attempt an insult, however feeble and ineffectual.

Generally, though, the Chinese players were welcoming and friendly, inviting me to play with them and peppering me with questions in the hybrid tongue of Chinglish. Sometimes we exchanged cell phone numbers and called in advance to meet and play another day. Mostly, though, I rode up alone and joined a game wherever I could find one, playing often enough that many strangers met in this way later became acquaintances and casual friends.

Beneath the friendly façade, however, danger lurked. With increasing frequency, my opponents employed the defense known in the NBA as “hack-a-Shaq.” The strategy first developed as a means to exploit Shaquille O’Neal’s terrible free throw shooting. At 7’2” and more than 300 pounds, Shaq is nearly unstoppable close to the basket. However, from fifteen feet away at the foul line, he’s worse than most schoolboys. So teams took to clobbering him every time Shaq had the ball, knowing that the odds were pretty good that he’d miss the foul shots. The strategy works even better in pick-up games, where there are no free throws, and it’s impossible for a player to foul out. On the playground, “hack-a-Shaq” has all the benefits with none of the costs.

As the spring semester went on, I found myself defended in this fashion quite often, practically tackled whenever I touched the ball. There were games when I never managed to lift my hands over my shoulders--a Gulliver in shorts bound up by Lilliputians. And then the injuries began, always inflicted with a smile first and apology afterwards. First, it was a black eye, or a panda eye, as the Chinese call it. Perhaps fearing that I’d be out of balance that way, another player blackened the other eye. Then a boy threw the ball in my face, nearly crushing my nose. My glasses were broken, and I started to play blind. One week in May, I played three days and suffered in succession a panda eye, a dislocated finger, and a sprained ankle. I had cuts and bruises on my arms and legs, scratches on my face.

It was all was too much to be coincidental. I imagined secret meetings in which my opponents parried over who would hit me where. Surely someone from the Party was calling the shots. At Suzhou University, the Chinese had reopened the Boxer Rebellion, and this time they were winning. Somebody had decided one foreign devil had go down.

So when I witness others indulging in conspiracy theories about China, I’m not impressed, for I have been the target of a real one. I’ll leave it to others to find a subtext of danger in slogans like “One China, One World, One Dream.” I’m just happy that I made it out of China alive.