Yao Ming retiring

HERE.

Too bad. I liked watching him play basketball when he was healthy, but that was less and less the case as time went by.

But what really interested me about the story was the final point: Yao really must be “one of the most famous people on the planet,” as is said, if you consider that his name recognition must be nearly universal in China.

China often fascinates me in that way. 15%-20% of the world’s population is there, and it’s a culture and even a written language that is completely closed off to me– almost like a parallel universe that I can’t enter without exceeding the speed of light by means of some special invention, or skirting the edge of a black hole.