Up Fake: China’s Booming Fake NBA Market

Today I wake up at 6:45, drink some coffee that makes me yearn for Starbucks, write for a different Web site and sit down to watch the Suns and the Lakers play Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals.

The Suns fended off L.A. behind 17 points and 15 assists from Steve Nash, making the series 2-1 and, with Boston already up 3-0 on Orlando, sparing the NBA the ominous possibility of dual sweeps in the Eastern and Western Conference Finals (on the heels, no less, of sweeps in three of the four conference semis).

After that, I text Li Ball and ask if he and the gang are going to play any ball today. Five o’clock, he texts back. I write until five and bike over to the courts.

We shoot around for a bit and I hop in the first game. No one is keeping score, but after about 20 minutes the hoard of players waiting to play goes from zero to six, and scorekeeping is invoked to regulate playing time. There are a variety of players waiting – a young guy who couldn’t have been older than 20, a few old guys built like houses, a 30-something who, from the smell of things, had been drinking prior to his arrival. 

And then there was one dude wearing a Minnesota Timberwolves jersey. He caught my eye for a few reasons. First, you don’t often see Minnesota Timberwolves jerseys here. Cleveland and Boston and definitely the Lakers, but not Minnesota. They don’t have any transcendent stars (sorry, Kevin Love), it isn’t a major city (just ask Ricky Rubio), and they were horrible last season (15-67 horrible, lost-their-last-seven-games horrible).

The other reason I notice this guy’s Timberwolves jersey is because it doesn’t say Timberwolves. It says “Tim erwolves,” with a gap where the B should have been. That there is either a typo or the thing is falling apart suggests one thing: the jersey is, in Chinese parlance, jiade. Fake.

Jiade clothes in China are everywhere. At the end of my shopping expedition today I was toting a “Ralph Lauren” shirt and a pair of “adidas” soccer jerseys. Those quotation marks are necessary, because while the tag says one thing, you are no doubt buying another. The Polo shirt, for instance, ran me a total of 39 yuan (less than $6). You can’t buy Ralph Lauren shirts for $6. The jerseys were a steal too. Here is one of the ones I bought, the Spanish national team road kit.

It came equipped with adidas tags, and it has that bright yellow adidas emblem right below the neck. Heck, it even says “climacool” on it, signifying that it is part of adidas’ high-priced climacool line of technologically advanced sports gear. It looks and feels real. Trust me, though, it’s not adidas; it’s jiade. Proof? It cost me 60 yuan. In the real world, it costs $70 USD, or roughly eight times what I bought it for.

China’s fake-clothing (and fake-everything) industry has been reported ad nauseum. Reuters wrote this article about counterfeit items – including DVDs that hit the shelves before movies hit the theatres – well over a year ago. The Seattle Times wrote this two-parter in 2006, as George W. Bush was preparing to land in China to deliver a “stern message to Chinese officials about the need to crack down on knockoffs of U.S. products” and pound home the assertion that “90 percent of all intellectual property in China is pirated.” This photo gallery was posted in 2007, showing how a traveler to China can find authentic “Paradi” clothing, “PenesamiG” batteries, and even “Sccoby” shirts (if you like the timeless comic strip Peanuts). And one of my favorites: someone posted this query on Yahoo! Answers, asking, “Where can I find fake clothes in Shanghai?” One of the respondents simply answered, “everywhere”.

(On a personal note…a while back I bought every single episode of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, South Park and The West Wing from a jiade DVD market. The total cost ran me about 50 yuan, or less than $8. That bounty would have cost me close to a few thousand dollars in America. Just think: at the time, The Simpsons had 17 seasons, and if you went to Best Buy or some other outlet, it’d be $40 per season. The Simpsons alone, therefore, would have cost me right about $700. South Park had at least a dozen seasons; that’d be $450 worth of discs. Seinfeld had nine seasons, or about $350, and the West Wing had seven season, or about $300. Add it up, and we’re talking about a lot of money. And still I got it all for eight bucks. Sure, the Chinese versions of these DVDs don’t have director commentaries, and they aren’t as sharp visually. But we’re not talking about watching Avatar or the Super Bowl. We’re talking about The Simpsons and Seinfeld. Hi-def isn’t important. Plus the jiade discs come complete with funny attempts at English like PALY AL instead of PLAY ALL, or DIC NE instead of DISC ONE.)

So yeah, China’s counterfeit industries – from clothing to DVDs to electronic goods – is and has been booming. And that boom has been chronicled for years.

But the one sub-sect of the jiade industry that is especially interesting to me (and pertinent to this blog) is the NBA basketball merchandise: shoes, jerseys and T-shirts, not to mention the NBA itself and its most prized commodity, the players. You can find all sorts of basketball stuff in China that is egregiously counterfeit. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

This is a Kobe Bryant shirt that I saw in Yangshuo. It looks normal enough, right? Well, there’s one problem. Bryant and adidas, which supposedly produced the shirt, parted ways in 2002. This shirt, therefore, is an infringement on Kobe’s current contract with Nike. Or it would be an infringement if it were the least bit real. (The NBA logo is thrown in just to make sure the maximum number of entities are being had.)

Like that Bryant shirt, these socks look pretty legit. The packaging is adorned by the NBA’s best young player, LeBron James, and those Nike and adidas logos look pretty darn real. Therein lies the problem: Nike and adidas…sharing identical packaging…and sharing the same player. Not likely. As with Bryant, LeBron inked a bajillion dollar deal with Nike, a deal which prohibits his likeness from being used by adidas to sell products. Of course, this isn’t adidas’ doing. (Quick note on LeBron’s contract with Nike. It was a seven-year deal completed in May of 2003 when LeBron was 18 years-old, and it was worth $90 million. Not only was LeBron 18, but he was more than a month away from even being drafted. I still find that unthinkable. All of it. Especially the fact he was 18.)

Notice anything wrong here? Nike packaging for a pair of socks that aren’t Nike. The logo resembles that of Saucony, but I really can’t be sure. Whatever it is, it isn’t Nike.

Here’s Kobe Bryant’s mug being used to sell some unlicensed merchandise.

The NBA is getting ripped off in all of these pictures because both its logo and players are being strewn about products that aren’t legitimate. But this one is especially egregious. Notice that there are three different companies, side by side, whoring out the NBA logo. Jerry West would be ticked.

Not only does this guy bear a striking resemblance to Frederick Sykes, but he is wearing some jiade clothing as well. If you go here, you’ll see that all L.A. Lakers gear is manufactured by adidas, even lame T-shirts that say stuff like “Where The Black Mamba Strikes.” I say we put Dr. Richard Kimble on the case.

I just can’t believe that the NBA or the Chicago Bulls would sanction this abomination: a quasi-cowboy hat with a huge Bull on it. Everyone who won all those Bulls championships – Jordan and Pippen and Jackson and the crew – is still alive. But when one of them dies, he will roll over in his grave because of this.

Finally, the Mother Lode. An entire wall lined with fake jerseys. Here we have, from left to right, LeBron, Carmelo, KG, Kobe, Derrick Rose and, cut off because the cameraman is a hack, an old Allen Iverson 76ers jersey. Unlike that previous pic of the Lakers jersey that had no brand logo, these jiade jersey are adorned by adidas’ three stripes. 

Alas, they’re all fake. They sell for 150 yuan, or about $22. Online, adidas sells these for $79.99. And it’s not like adidas is philanthropic in China and simply hooks up the citizenry. I’ve bought two pairs of adidas shoes here – real shoes, from a real adidas outlet store – and the conversion is exactly one-to-one. For instance, the Derrick Rose basketball kicks I bought last November were about 700 yuan, or a hair over $100. That’s precisely what they would be back home.

I’m not interested in philosophizing about the morality of counterfeit NBA gear (or counterfeit anything). You can argue (quite successfully) whatever point you want. On the one hand, sure, it’s ripping people off. It’s screwing Kobe and LeBron and the NBA out of royalties that, legally, should be theirs. In that sense, it is immoral. But at the same time, it’s hard to feel too sorry for these multimillionaires missing out on a slice of their jersey sales, jerseys that are priced through the roof because these guys likely wouldn’t have signed their respective deals for anything less than the GDP-sized sums they did. 

Plus, these products are good for the Chinese economy. People have jobs making this bogus merchandise, and regular Chinese citizens – most of whom aren’t rich enough to pay $80 USD for a shirt – can rock their favorite gear. From that Seattle Times article:

Counterfeiting has become deeply entrenched in China's economy as a source of income for both small-time hawkers and powerful local tycoons. With millions of jobs dependent on the counterfeit trade, many in China think cracking down would mainly benefit foreign companies.

I’m in no position to pass judgment; I’m not an innocent bystander. Indeed, I own my own slice of China’s vast fake basketball clothing market: a Larry Bird 1992 All-Star Game jersey that my brother bought me two years ago. With a huge star adorning the chest and a hefty dose of early-90s font, it is the epitome of Old School, and I love it. 

I used to get such a kick out of seeing the look of dudes’ faces when I strolled into an all-black gym wearing this Larry Bird jersey. I’m not imposing physically (at all), so the perception was far more “dorky” than “savvy.” I usually played pretty well in it though, channeling my inner Bird and deriving the magical residue that was surely imbued into that jersey, even if it was jiade.

Interview Request, II

I don’t know if he was trying to deck me with a ‘bow to the face and just missed, or if he was indeed simply trying to send a warning shot into my ear. Either way, he elbowed me in the head. I grabbed my ear and took a few steps back; he drew near for more.

I get to Shandong Normal at about 4:30. It’s a nice day, sunny and probably 55 degrees. I buy a bottle of water from Wang – “Refreshment Man” in previous chapters – and walk over to Court No. 1. I set down my bag, untie my shoes and peel off my corduroy pants. Under my trousers are a pair of maroon Florida State basketball shorts. (I think the official color is “garnet.”) Two bottle ladies – you know, the women described at length in the post “Trash Springs Eternal” – sit a few feet away, and they start jabbering at me.

At first I think they’re asking me the standard 20 Questions I always get in Jinan – what country are you from, what are you doing here, etc. Even when I don’t know what someone is asking me, I just start answering these questions. I’m from America. I’m an English teacher. Usually it’s what they’re looking for, and if not, they conclude that I’m too much of a dolt to bother talking to. That’s what I do with these ladies – start telling them my abbreviated bio – but they just chuckle. They’re still jabbering. I don’t understand, I tell them with a smile, more defeated than annoyed.

Finally one of the ladies reaches her hand out and touches my bald, unclothed knee. That same moment one of the players on the court – they’re waiting for me; I’m the eighth man – comes over and translates: Are you cold? he asks. The ladies laugh, realizing that I now realize what they were asking. I smile, shake my head and trot on out to the court.

We gather around in a circle, and I am struck by the fact that I recognize about half the players. Recognize – but don’t know. And this is where the interviewing thing comes in: I can’t talk with these guys. My Chinese is atrocious; my girlfriend still isn’t confident that her Chinese is up to snuff; my bilingual co-workers haven’t warmed to the idea of playing translator for me.

Thus, while I know these characters, I don’t so much as know their names. Just faces and past encounters.

One of them is guy who tried to fight me last fall. At the start of a game to five back in November, he waved off his teammate who was guarding me and declared that he would take me. He sought me out – that should have been a clue.

A few minutes in, we were tussling for a rebound under the basket. The way I remember it, he was pushing me in the back; I reached blindly to toss his hand off me; I got more body than hand. As I jumped for the rebound he gave me an out-and-out shove. The ball bounced out of bounds, and I turned to stare at the guy. I flipped my hands upside-down and furrowed my brows, asking non-verbally what that was all about. He shouted some things in Chinese then, out of nowhere, whirled his right elbow into my left ear.

I don’t know if he was trying to deck me with a ‘bow to the face and just missed, or if he was indeed simply trying to send a warning shot into my ear. Either way, he elbowed me in the head. I grabbed my ear and took a few steps back; he drew near for more.

At this point some of the other guys grabbed him, which seemed to invigorate him. His arm-waving and yelling was that of someone who wanted to throw down. I, however, have never been in a bona fide fight, and I wasn’t about to have my inaugural bout in a setting where I was in the minute minority (I had gone to the courts by myself, friendless and without allies). So I walked off the court and grabbed my things to leave.

After several seconds he calmed down and reached out to shake my hand. I wasn’t infuriated enough to fight, but I was ticked enough to scoff at his peace offering. I shook the hand of another player, a guy who had befriended me that day and left.

Luckily, it now seems to be water under the bridge. I’m sure he remembers, and I’m sure he’s sure that I remember. But it’s not a huge deal. This is one of the virtues of basketball – it has reconciliatory powers.

In late December of 2008, I was playing ball at a local gym in Kansas City. We were playing a five-on-five, full-court game, and I was hot. In a contest to 15, I hit three straight three-pointers (which count as two) on the slouch who was guarding me. After my team got up something like 8-1, a tall black dude on the other team waved off the slouch and insisted upon guarding me. He was a good player – tall, athletic, springy – but his defense consisted of little more than fouling me every time I tried to shoot it. I’d call the foul, he’d gripe at the top of his lungs, seemingly expecting me to relent on the call. Then it would happen again – foul, gripe, our ball. Foul, gripe, our ball.

Eventually, because you don’t shoot free throws, the other team caught up and took the lead; the guy guarding me scored the winning bucket, and he let me know about it.

For some reason, I was totally convinced that he wasn’t going to fight me. Berate me with cusses, sure. Tell me to get the $^%k off his court, sure. Act like a total punk, sure. But I for some reason, I knew he wouldn’t actually hit me. If he did, he’d likely do some serious damage; I knew he wouldn’t. So, in a rather uncharacteristic display of hostility, I unloaded on him with a flurry of vulgarity that had never crossed my lips. I pulled out everything I could think of short of the N word. I am not usually so brazen with my words on the court – a skinny white kid who’s never been in a fight needs to watch what he says, especially in a gym full of black dudes. But my better judgment was swimming in a pool of rage.

More than a year later, someone asked me the moment in my life when I had been the most angry. I thought about it, and listed this instance – when this guy fouled his way to a victory, and then yakked about it like he was some stud.

I remember well when I saw him again, about two weeks later. I had just laced up my shoes and popped onto the court between games. He approached me…I gulped…he said: “Hey, man. Sorry ‘bout the other day. I got a little worked up.” Before he said this, I considered him one of the most vile pieces of trash I’d ever played with. After he said this, we clasped hand, gave a little man-hug, and that was that. This is the guy who had recently caused me to be the most angry I’d ever been in my life; now we were man-hugging. The power of basketball.

Sure, without basketball we’d have never gotten into it in the first place. But without basketball, we’d have never reconciled either. The same phenomenon played out with the guy who elbowed my ear. It was basketball that prompted our hatred, and basketball that buried it.

Another player today is a lanky dude wearing glasses. He plays with abandon, like a hyena. Like the guy with the elbow, this lanky fellow has treated me as something of a challenger in the past. He sought me out on defense the last time we took the court, and the first time I ever played with him he barreled me over on the way to the basket. I remember that play well: he was dribbling on the right side of the lane, and the put his head down to drive. There are lots of whirling-dervish drives on these courts, moves where the philosophy seems to be, I’m going to get to the basket, and it’s in your best interest not to get in my way. Well, I must have underestimated his zest to score, for I subsequently took an elbow square to the chest, a blow that sent me to the ground in a heap. I didn’t call a foul, but the on-court consensus was in my favor; my team took the ball out of bounds.

As irked as I was by that move – if you can call it a move – all ill-will faded when, as I was leaving, that same guy pointed to the spot where he laid me out and said, “Sorry.” Hatched buried. I told him it was no problem and that he was good at basketball – which he is – and then proceeded to leave. I have seen him since then, but hadn’t actually played with him. Not until today.

Then there’s the baller with the slick Derrick Rose shoes. This is the guy who, back in mid-March, had summoned me upon my arrival at the courts. His shoes are markedly dirtier than they were then, as are mine; our white trim is now a sort of gray, sullied and stained by Jinan’s inescapable dirt. In America, basketball shoes are generally treated with a little more TLC. At indoor courts that I used to frequent, people would usually wear a pair of tennis shoes or boots or whatever to the gym, and only once they were inside would they bust out their basketball kicks. At many indoor gymnasiums in the States, sneakers line the side of the court, like an entryway to a Japanese household where you must take off your shoes when you walk through the door. The only difference was that people would take off one pair and slip on the next.

When we played back in March, the guy with the Roses was easily the best player on the court, and as I left I got the sense that he had invited me to join his game for the mere purpose of tearing up some foreigner – which he did. He’s up to his tricks again today, springing into the air and lofting soft shots through the netless rim, or deciding at the last moment to dart a pass to a teammate. He’s the type of player who is good enough to thwart whatever defense you play, an annoying combination of basketball acumen and the physical prowess to execute. As was the case last time, he’s the best player on the court.

These are all guys I’d like to cultivate relationships with, guys who I’d like to talk to about basketball, college, what they do for fun, their families, etc. (And, you know, what’s with the elbow to the head.) But I can’t. I can tell them that they made a good play; I can apologize for making a bad play; I can ask them if they like basketball. But I can’t really talk to them. I can’t really interview them.

Oh, well. I can still write about them.

Chucking Foreigners

Yeah, he scored 71 points in one game, the all-time record for the CBA. You can’t score 71 points unless you shoot unabashedly. And Americans – with just cause – are reputed to do just that.

I traipse out onto the schoolyard courts at around four in the afternoon. The near court is populated on one end by two kids shooting zealously, and at the opposite end by an older man, probably about 40, shooting by his lonesome. For some reason, I opt for the older guy.

I rebound a few of his shots and toss the ball back to him whether he makes it or misses. Eventually, once I’m confident that he doesn’t resent my presence, I loft a few shots of my own. Three in a row clang in, each time kicking off the back of the rim and right back to me, as though I had my own personal rebounder. We trade shots for all of three minutes before the man says he wants to play two-on-two with the kids at the far end. Who am I to argue?

We stroll down there to join the kids, each of whom I recognize from previous duels on the court. Immediately two more kids show up. Two-on-two has quickly become three-on-three; teams are dictated by the spinning ball. The older guy and I are on separate squads.

Within minutes, two of my foreign teacher friends appear under the basket. One of them, Toby, simply looks like a basketball player – kind of like John Lennon simply looked like a musician. Toby is 6-foot-5, lean and athletic. He is black, to boot, and there is no point in denying it: blacks hold a bit of a monopoly on basketball. The estimated 300,000,000 Chinese people who play basketball may eventually break up that monopoly, but they haven’t yet.

Just think: nine of 10 NBA All-Star starters were black in 2010; same in 2009; same in 2008; almost the same in 2007 (that year, it was 10 of 10). Alas, Toby is English, and he uses his palpable athletic prowess on the soccer field – or football pitch, as he’d say – and not the basketball court. He’s never played a moment of basketball in his life.

The other foreign teacher is John, who I’ve been told looks the part of my doppelganger. Like me, he’s a hair under 6-foot. Like me, he has light-colored hair. Like me, his skin is milky white. He rips off his long-sleeve shirt, now stripped down to shorts and a T-shirt; it’s getting to be that shorts-and-T-shirt time of year. One of the numerous Chinese onlookers joins John to make the teams even. The two-on-two game is now four-on-four.

John and I have traded some verbal barbs about playing basketball – who’ll show up who, etc. – but have never actually played each other. As such, I make a point to guard him. He shoots a shot the first time he touches the ball. It misses, but his next shot, which comes about 20 seconds later, doesn’t. It was a three-pointer, which still only counts as one. Not wanting to be outdone, I chuck a shot the next time I touch the ball. It goes in as well, and a quick sense of relief washes over me – I haven’t been totally outdone, not yet at least.

While there are eight people on the court, John and I fall into our own little game. We have no interest in trying to outperform the other players – just each other. There is no great pride in scoring on an adolescent Chinese kid, nor does balling on a 40-year-old do much for the old basketball ego. But John and I take pleasure in trying to one-up one another. We shoot it freely and often, and eventually it crosses my mind that neither of us are passing much at all.

We have, unwittingly, fallen into a stereotype: the selfish American basketball player. While many American basketball players are revered here in China – Kobe and LeBron jerseys abound, for instance, and Michael Jordan is held in high esteem – there is still prevalent resentment among native hoops fans toward foreigners who play in China’s professional league. They are thought to sully the game with their tendency to monopolize shot attempts. According to a July, 2009 New York Times article about the recent basketball boom in China, TV ratings for Chinese Basketball Association games soared once teams were allowed to import up to two foreign players. Despite that popularity, however, there are still conflicting feelings.

… foreign players [have] found starring roles — the top 15 scorers were non-Chinese, and players like Bonzi Wells and Dontae’ Jones — who had less than stellar N.B.A. careers — frequently scored more than 40 points a game. At the same time, the dominance of foreign players fueled frustration.

“Foreigners should play supporting roles, not dominate the game,” said Zhang Xiong, director of operations for the Chinese Basketball Association.

Li Xiaofeng, 20, a restaurant manager and C.B.A. fan, said: “I don’t like foreign players. They got most of the chances to shoot and score. How about our own players? They don’t have the chance to bring their skill and talent into play.

“Our Chinese players’ ability is limited by the current rule.”

Some Chinese state news media outlets went so far as to call imported players a “malignant tumor.”…

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that John and I are tumors. But we do indeed get caught up in a little one-on-one battle, and for a while a good chunk of the shots are coming via our foreign fingertips. Like that article says, this happens all the time in CBA games. At any one time, it’s a safe bet that there will be six Chinese guys and four African-Americans on the court – the four black guys split two per team. Well, despite being in the minority in terms of numbers, there are stretches where the foreigners shoot just about every shot. And not always good shots. Wild shots. Jump shots. Ill-advised shots at the beginning of the shot clock, without any passing. A friend and I were half-watching a CBA game at a bar the other night, and he described the game as, “Get the ball to the black dude and watch him shoot.” (If that sounds crude, rest assured that Antuan is black.)

An article penned in February of 2009, appearing at Dalje.com, backs up the NYT article.

…Increasing numbers of former NBA players are turning to China’s professional league for jobs and their aggressive domination of the court has drawn criticism from a sports system dedicated to developing Chinese players.

China’s teams stepped up recruitment abroad this season after new rules allowed them to field two foreign players, a move the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) hoped would attract interest in the league and expose players to tougher competition.

High-level imports such as former NBA players Bonzi Wells and Donnell Harvey have, however, refocused virtually every CBA team's strategy around the scoring power of the foreigners, reducing stats and game time for Chinese players.

“In the past it’s been guys who were good but more team-oriented,” said Jason Dixon, a U.S. import who has played for the Guangdong Tigers for 10 years.

“This year you’re finding a lot of high-calibre NBA players.

“Even in college (Americans) are told, ‘If you want to play in the NBA, you have to score, you have to have a sense of selfishness,’ and I think the Chinese don't understand that.”

The CBA's top 15 scorers are all foreigners this season, and the reaction has not been positive.

Dontae Jones, a former Celtics forward now leading the CBA in points scored, has been described by local media such as Titan Sports as a “cancer” on the Beijing Ducks because he shoots too much.

Former NBA guard Wells, who left the league last month, was also blasted by domestic media for pulling down the stats of his team mates by scoring as many as 50 points per game -- without improving Shanxi Zhongyu's record….

CBA office director Zhang Xiong agreed that the domination of the imports had been “detrimental for the growth of Chinese players”, who now play less….

“They are here to help CBA teams play, not just to exhibit their own shooting skills,” Zhang said….

A lot of times, though, games do indeed turn into an exhibition of foreigners’ shooting skills. If nothing else, the scoring-leaders list of the CBA reads like a who’s-who of imported American players. The CBA’s top scorer is Andre Emmett, who averages 32 points per game. Emmett, 27, is a former star at Texas Tech and was the second-round draft pick of the Seattle Sonics in 2004; he was then traded to Memphis. He was a stud in college, where he averaged 18.7, 21.8 and 20.6 points per game over his final three seasons at Tech, shooting at or above 50 percent each of those seasons despite being a 6-5 guard. I remember Emmett especially well because he had some pretty good games against Kansas; in 2004, he had 29 points on 20 field goal attempts at Allen Fieldhouse. He graduated as the Big 12’s all-time leading scorer, and that record could stand for a long while seeing as anyone who scores a lot nowadays just goes pro.

Emmett didn’t score his prodigious amount of points by accident. Indeed, as a junior in 2002-03, he led the Big 12 and NCAA in field goal attempts, and the next season he again led the Big 12 in shots (and was second in the nation.) His 882 career field goal attempts rank as the eighth-most in NCAA history.

Well, Emmett still likes to shoot, and still scores a lot of points. To date, he has at least 30 points in 20 of his 32 games, and scored at least 40 seven times. On March 7, Emmett had this ridiculous stat line: 31-45 FG, 3-11 3PT, 6-6 FT, 71 points. Yeah, he scored 71 points in one game, the all-time record for the CBA. You can’t score 71 points unless you shoot unabashedly. And Americans – with just cause – are reputed to do just that.

Just look at the names of the top nine scoring leaders in the CBA. And remember, imported players are the minority; there are but two per team. (If you don’t think Pickett and Edward and White and Brown sound like Chinese names, you’re right.)

1. Andre Emmett, 32.0
2. Charles Gaines, 30.5
3. Tim Pickett, 29.8
4. Corsley Edwards, 29.3
5. Leon Rodgers 28.5
6. John Lucas 27.9
7. Rodney White 27.5
8. Andre Brown 27.5
9. James Mays, 26.0

Number 10 is a guy named Wang.

Like Antuan said, a lot of the time it’s a matter of getting the ball to the blacks guys and getting out of the way.

The irony, though, is that Chinese people still love some of the NBA’s great chuckers. There is resentment when Americans come over and start to sully the CBA, but so long as they’re in America, it’s all good. Kobe Bryant was a downright sensation in China during the 2008 Olympics, and his jersey is still among the most popular with people here – and as of today he leads the NBA in field goal attempts. Same goes for LeBron James. He’s a star; in fact, one of the kids yesterday was wearing a LeBron jersey. He is No. 3 in the NBA in shot attempts. (In all fairness, LeBron is No. 6 in assists. So it’s not like he’s a total ball hog.) Dwyane Wade, the NBA’s fourth most frequent shooter, is another hugely popular figure here.

It is therefore an oversimplification to say that Chinese people don’t like guys who shoot it a lot. Kobe and LeBron and Wade – these guys are iconic here, yet they certainly fit the of eager-to-launch-it-American mold. In fact, those are three of the five highest-scoring players in the league. So scoring acumen is appreciated by the Chinese – as well as John and me.

We are mired in our game within the game. On one play, he is guarding me as I dribble with my left hand into the lane. I am cut off by one of his teammates – which has surely left one of my teammates unguarded. Alas, passing doesn’t cross my mind. I screech to a halt before I plow over John’s teammate, which allows John – who was a step behind me – to catch up. I am now wedged between the two of them, not an ideal spot to be. But I make a quick dribble through my legs with my left hand and split the double-team. Then, with an iota of space, I elevate and shoot a 14-foot jump shot. This is the only goal in the schoolyard that has a net, so I get to see the shot actually swish through. It’s a beautiful sight, albeit a horribly selfish shot.

To be honest, I don’t think the Chinese kids minded John and I today. We were, after all, the two best players out there, and on multiple occasions the kids were willingly deferring to us, as though they wanted us to shoot. And of course, we were happy to oblige. John and I will never be playing each other for the first time again, and thus there will never have the same incentive to try to upstage each other. We’ll get back to playing more of a team game soon enough.

Unless, that is, those articles are right. Unless we really are cancers.

It's been brought to my attention that some people can't leave comments on this blog. I don't know exactly why that is. I have enabled comments, and a few people have indeed left remarks. Even if you can't leave a comment in the Comments section, I'd still love to hear from you. If you have thoughts, suggestions or criticisms about the blog, please feel free to write me at culturalcrossover@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!

Schoolyard Ball, II

Anymore Converse gets dominated on the basketball market by Nike and adidas, but there is still a contingent of Chinese teenagers rocking Converse basketball gear. Jimmy Chitwood would be proud.

I planned on going to go to the university today to interview refreshment man. I was able to fumble through a small conversation with him the other day, deducing that his name is Wang Sheng Heng and that he is 60 years-old. Wanting to continue the conversation – but being incapable of doing so by myself – I coaxed a bilingual Chinese coworker into translating for me. Alas, it’s really cold, and neither my coworker nor myself feel like making the trek over there. I won’t be able to build off that interview today, but I should be able to soon.

Still, though, I want to play basketball, and each of the four courts in the schoolyard boasts kids playing. So I layer up and stroll down there to get in the action.

When I arrive, one court houses a four-on-four game while the other three are home to simple shootarounds. I approach the nearest court, where three kids are shooting lazily, noncompetitively. One of them – the tallest and thickest one – is wearing baggy jeans with a back-pocket adorned with the Denver Nuggets logo, a baby-blue and yellow emblem set atop a background of the Rocky Mountains. The Nuggets were my favorite team in college – per proximity – and I get a chuckle out of his pants. The other two guys are wearing Converse brand sweatshirts. This, too, induces a smile because Converse is probably the oldest basketball-based brand in America, and by extension the world. (For me and for many basketball fans, Converse was immortalized in the 1986 film “Hoosiers,” starring Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper. The movie is about a small-town basketball team – the Hickory Hoosiers – and their run to an Indiana state title in 1954. The Converse connection is this: the team sported Converse basketball kicks, just like pretty much everyone did back in the 50s. Anymore Converse gets dominated on the basketball market by Nike and adidas, but there is still a contingent of Chinese teenagers rocking Converse basketball gear. Jimmy Chitwood would be proud.)

When I say that these kids are just shooting around, I mean it. They aren’t playing any American games like HORSE or 21 or Around the World. They are simply shooting for the hell of it. And unlike most Americans, they aren’t giving “change” to the person who makes a shot. The practice of change is a staple on American playgrounds and in American gyms. If you make a shot, you get to shoot again; you get your “change.” I couldn’t tell you the exact origin of the word. Maybe the idea is that hitting a shot is money, and if you give money then you get change in return. Don’t know. I just know that more often than not, if someone makes a shot in the U.S., they get a chance to make another. Well, that’s not how they roll here in China, and especially not on this particular court. These kids are shooting wild, outlandish shots: fadeaways and running hook shots and long three-pointers (you can still make out the faint sketch of the three-point line). The thinking seems to be, if there is no chance of getting the ball back anyway, then why not have a little fun?

Their flippant attitude is punctuated when one of them – the one wearing the Nuggets jeans, who is the apparent ringleader – busts out his cell phone and dials up some rap music. It’s an English-speaking song, and these kids surely have even less of an idea what the lyrics are than I do. But they still enjoy it. The Nuggets kid starts to dance, and everyone just laughs along. It’s a fun scene.

All the while, I just keep shooting whenever a ball bounces my way. I had a massage about an hour beforehand, so I am taking it easy, not wanting to undo any of the magic that was bestowed upon my back and shoulders.

I am the fourth person on this court, but eventually numbers five, six, seven and eight mosey over. Before long I am invited to play in a four-on-four game. I agree, and we circle up around the ball, ready to let inertia determine the teams. The kids seem to think that I don’t understand how this procedure works, but of course I have figured it out (after several baffling games). I nod knowingly, imploring them to carry on as usual. They start spinning the ball.

Teams are divvied up. We don’t keep score. I feel obliged to pass each time I touch the ball. I am grateful for the chance to play a little basketball, and I want to ingratiate myself with them. Plus, they are way younger than me, and I wouldn’t get much of a kick out of showing them up.

Eventually, though, one of the kids on the other team starts guarding me really tight. I instinctively feel obliged to do a little something, so I shoot some long, closely guarded jump shots. I do this a few times, hit a few threes, the other players applaud. “Good ball!” they yell in Chinese. I was wrong: I do get a kick out of showing them up.

After about 30 minutes, a ball misses everything and takes a wicked bounce off a crack in the concrete, jutting quickly off the court and toward our apartment. I chase it down, reach to grab it and toss it back onto the court, to no one in particular. I decide that this is as good a time as any for me leave, seeing as I’m growing weary of the cold even if they aren’t.

I yell “Bye bye!” to them, an expression that, like hello, most Chinese people know. They yell back, and I turn to walk wondering: maybe playing an amicable round of basketball with these kids is a good way to defuse the animosity between them and us foreign teachers. After all, this is the same group of scoundrels who yell at us and tagged our building (before nearly burning it down). Yet when we play basketball, there is no hostility, no bitterness. I don’t care about past transgressions, and because we’re playing together, the incentive for them to shout things at me is removed. We aren’t enemies. We’re teammates, friends, people who are simply enjoying a game. I say all of a dozen words to them, but no more are necessary. I would venture to say that that basketball game is the best that any foreign teachers has communicated with those punk students in a long, long time. At least since I played basketball with them last winter.

That night when I come back from dinner, I see kids playing basketball as I round the last corner before the apartment. Two kids are shooting lazily in the soft illumination emitted from the light lining the courts. They see me and shout. But it’s not the usual chorus of smart-ass “Halloo!!!”s. They shout, “Come here!” Those two words, coupled with the patter of the ball, are the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard come from the students. I will make a point to use this language, basketball, to talk with them some more.

Say What?

If you hear it enough times in one day, it means you’re doing something right.

The weather is spectacular as I stroll out of my apartment on March 11. It’s a sunny 60 degrees with little smog – which along with wind-chill and clouds and precipitation must be considered a meteorological factor in China.

There are people playing ball all over when I arrive at Shandong Normal. I stop to see refreshment man (above) – his name, I’ve learned, is Wang Sheng Heng – and buy a Gatorade and a bottle of water. Before I have stuffed the change into my pocket, a guy in his early 20s has stealthily approached me and is inviting me to join his game. This is the second straight visit to the courts where I’ve been invited to play with someone before I’ve left the refreshment stand. And the second time I’ve accepted.

He is shorter – maybe 5-7 – and muscular and is wearing a slick pair of adidas kicks, the 2010 Derrick Rose shoes. I had Roses last year and I loved them, and I expect, based on the quality of his sneakers, that I am being lead to a more serious game. I also expect, based on the fact that he invited me within seconds of my arrival, that I am being led to a nearby game. I am right about the first part and wrong about the second. We traverse three or four courts before we finally get to our destination. I have no idea how this guy saw me. Alas, I’ve no idea how to say, “How did you see me from so far away?”

(This picture on the right is of me guarding the dude with the Derrick Rose kicks. It was taken after a few games, and after this guy had already made me look bad on multiple occasions. Notice I'm face-guarding him even though he (a) just inbounded the ball and (b) the ball is nowhere in sight. I'd had enough...)

I happily peel off my pants, noticing that for the first time in a long time I am actually warm despite being outside. One of the other dudes at the court, the oldest guy, says some stuff to me in a disgruntled voice. Of course I don’t know what he’s saying, and I tell him “I don’t understand,” which has been my go-to phrase for the last six months. (The sentence is, “Ting bu dong,” the literal translation of which is, “Hear no understand.”) Other players hear this and they laugh. This older guy, though, just keeps right on talking. I say “Ting bu dong” again, and he gives a dismissive hiss. He has a grizzled appearance, buzzed hair and is wearing a brown sweatshirt and brown sweatpants. I hope he doesn’t guard me.

We begin playing on the western-most court, which bumps up against a track. There are people jumping and running on the other side of the fence; soon there are people gawking and staring on the other side of the fence. They are apparently baffled by my presence, which is nothing new.

After about 20 minutes a friend of mine, Jonathan (right), shows up too. He is a fellow teacher, and he only lends to the spectacle. He is taller than me, about 6-foot-3, and his shorts reveal a pair of milky white legs. Now, I’m pretty pale, but Jonathan’s legs are like pegs of a picket fence. This, coupled with the fact that he’s the second-tallest person in attendance, intensifies the gazing and swells the audience. At one point when we’re both playing, there is an unbroken row of onlookers on the other side of the fence stretching from the baseline to almost halfcourt. People are conglomerating on our side of the fence, too, lining the left sideline and wrapping around the left corner and along the baseline.

We play for a few hours. Nothing of great significance in terms of basketball. Jonathan gets popped pretty hard in the face by that short dude wearing brown sweats – you know, the one who greeted me so inhospitably. No idea if it was less than totally accidental. And the guy who first invited me to play turns out to be a freaking stud. In one game to five, I am guarding him as he scores the first three points of the game. Nothing I can do.

Aside from that, there are a few interesting linguistic points worth noting. In American basketball, you will often hear the phrase “My bad.” It is a sort of apology and acknowledgement that, yes, I made a mistake. If someone commits a turnover, they may say, “My bad.” If someone isn’t guarding their man, and their man ends up scoring, they may say, “My bad.” If someone takes a stupid shot – and they know it’s a stupid shot – they may say, “My bad.”

Linguistically, it doesn’t make a ton of sense. “Bad,” after all, is an adjective, yet the way the sentence is constructed – My bad. – it should be a noun. My high school coach used to berate us for using the phrase. “Yeah, I know it’s your bad!” he would say with a donut-shaped mouth and squinted eyes. “No shit it’s your bad. Maybe I’ll just start saying, ‘I’m pissed!” How would that be?”

Well, the Jinanese have an equivalent to “My bad” – both in meaning and grammatical unsoundness. Here, when someone commits a turnover or has a brain-lock on defense or botches a shot, they say, “Wo de.” Wo de literally translates to “My.” They use the phrase liberally, just like players in the States say my bad, and they use it for the exact same reasons. It’s interesting that there is a Chinese equivalent to “My bad.” that, just like its American counterpart, makes no literal sense.

There is also an analogous quasi-trash-talking phrase that the Chinese use. In the States, when someone takes a shot that the defender is certain won’t go in, you’ll hear phrases like “Broke!” or “Off!” or, one of my favorites, “Live with that.” – as in, I’ll live with you taking that shot because there isn’t a chance in hell it’s going in. Well, here they say “Mei you,” which is pronounced like mayo, you know, the condiment.

“Mei you” literally means “Don’t have.” If you want a certain dish at a restaurant but they don’t make it, they’ll say “Mei you.” If you are looking for shoes that are slightly bigger than your average Chinese man wears – and this happened to me for about five hours one day – the clerk will say “Mei you.” (It’s not like my feet are gargantuan; I wear 12s. But I had to stop by literally two dozen shoe stores before anyone had my size. And even then I was stuck with these goofy blue-and-silver adidas running shoes. I digress…)

On the basketball court, “Mei you” is something you hear when someone wants to give you a little barb, when someone wants to get inside your head because they are confident that you’ll miss a shot. A few times today opposing players call out “Mei you” while I am shooting, and the first two times they are right: I “don’t have” a bucket. The payoff comes in a particularly tight game with the score knotted 4-4. I shoot a jump shot from the left side, and one of the best players from the other team – the tallest guy on the court; he had to be 6-5 – shouts Mei you! with the ball in the air. The shot slides through the net, and as annoying it is when someone calls that out and you do miss, it is tenfold more satisfying when someone calls that out and you make it.

Finally, “Hao qiu.” Hao, which means good, is pronounced like the first syllable of Yao Ming’s name; qiu is pronounced like – well, I still can’t pronounce it quite right. The word “basketball” is “lan qiu.” Lan is basket, qiu is ball. Hao qiu, then, literally equates to “good ball.” You’ll hear this when someone does anything good – a good shot, a good pass, a good block, a steal, a rebound. Hao qiu! Hao qiu! Hao qiu! It’s a utility term for granting approval.

There really is no American equivalent, at least none that I know of. You’ll hear any number of things on an American court. A good shot could inspire someone to blurt “wet,” as in the ball splashes through the net. If someone gets a steal, you could hear the word “cookies,” as in someone just stole your cookies. Sick and nasty and pure are all other words you hear that seem to translate, at least roughly, to “hao qiu.” I like the ubiquity of hao qiu, how it is so all-encompassing, a true blanket statement. If you hear it enough times in one day, it means you’re doing something right.

I’m not sure how regional all these phrases are. Maybe they’re more Jinanese than Chinese. In his book Oracle Bones, which amounts to a narrative-driven history of China, author Peter Hessler talks about some trash-talking in the south-central province of Sichuan.

In basketball games, if an athlete shot and air ball or made a bad play, the Sichuanese fans chanted yangwei, yangwei, yangwei – impotent, impotent, impotent. After I played basketball with Willy’s classmates, he would often say, in mock earnestness, “I see that you still have a big problem with impotence.”

In a New Yorker article, Hessler added: To encourage the home team, they chant “xiongqi” (“erection”).

I don’t know if hao qiu and wo de and the like are phrases that you’ll here at courts around the country. But I know that they’re phrases you hear here, and phrases that may slip out of my mouth for a while when I get back to the States.

Not Keeping Score, Learning the Dress Code, II

The ball is overinflated and coated with dust; the court is pockmarked and dimpled: there is an obstacle course of small potholes and cancerous swells.

Playing conditions are spotty. The ball is overinflated and coated with dust; the court is pockmarked and dimpled: there is an obstacle course of small potholes and cancerous swells. I notice a few times that my foot hits the ground before it was supposed to, and look down to see a mound of concrete growing out of the pavement like a cyst. Other times the ground is a fraction of an inch lower than I anticipated, throwing me off-balance when my foot touches down. I feel my away around and learn to avoid the minefield that is the left baseline corner.

As one o’clock turns into 1:30, people start trickling onto the courts. Some more players – particularly tall ones, at that – conglomerate on the opposite baseline, watching the proceedings. Our game is interrupted when one of the players scurries to the sidelines to answer his cell phone. After a momentary pause – like he was being given a chance to end the call quickly – the guy who gave me the Mao wave does the same to the hoard of giants at the other end of the court. Six guys stroll over; four of them are taller than 6-foot-1, and three of them must be at least 6-4. If readers out there subscribe to the “All Chinese people are short” myth, I assure you that these guys dispel it. (OK, Chinese people do indeed tend to be shorter. But for the most part that is an exaggerated stereotype. Not everyone is Yao Ming, but it’s not a land of midgets.)

The spin-the-ball ritual is foregone, and the guy who keeps inviting people over drafts himself a team. He seems to be a leader of sorts, at least today. He selects himself, two of the best players from our three-on-three game and me. He either thinks I am good or thinks I am a novelty, and I don’t really care which; I just want to play.

Now, for as goofy as I may have looked with my shorts and cap, this “leader” takes the cake in my mind. He is wearing a tight long-sleeved purple shirt and tight dark-blue jeans, and his hair looks like a pinecone. The hair wrapping around the lower part of his scalp is resting at ease, but the hair on his crown is gelled to all hell. It is increasingly vertical as it nears the top of his head, propped up by some sort of hair product. I don’t know how much gel or spray he used, but I know that the hair atop his dome didn’t move an inch the whole day and that he was emanating the artificial, perfumey aroma of product from the opening tip. But whatever, dude could play.

After the tall guys stroll over there is an unstated sense that games are about to become more serious. Now it’s four-on-four, and now there are enough people on this end of the court to field three teams. Thus, if you’re team loses, you sit out. We start keeping score.

The first matchup is my team versus a squad that boasts two of the three tallest guys here, each of whom is better than 6-2. At 5-11, I am one of the taller people on my team. No matter, though, because we quickly race out to five points, which is the magic number. Each one of us notches at least one basket, and I can the winning shot on a turn-around fadeaway in the lane, a shot I practiced a million times by my lonesome during college.

The next group that comes out is totally overmatched. I hit jump shots on my first two touches and notice a palpable difference in my play. The moment we start keeping score, I am suddenly competitive: I am pissed when I miss and pretty stoked when I make it. My defense is better, my passes crisper. Keeping score is basically like two cups of coffee for my game: it sharpened me and got all hyped up.

We lose our third game against the giants who, now that they’re warmed up, start to assert themselves as the best team playing. Our team assumes a spot along baseline where all the losers wait for their chance to get back out there. I walk over to my backpack, which is about 15 feet away, to jot down a note in my Official Chinese Basketball Reporter Notebook. When I come back I am greeted by a teammate who is extending a pack of cigarettes, one of them invitingly jutting out of the pack. He is probably an inch shorter than me with – you won’t believe this – black hair and yellowish skin. He seems pretty fit, a fact revealed by his skin-tight t-shirt. Across the chest of the shirt it says “Calvin Klein” in glinty, diamond-sized studs. It’s the type of shirt that you would never see on a basketball court in the States because it might come off as, oh, a little fruity. What’s interesting, though, is that his below-waist attire is quintessential basketball: black mesh adidas sweats and some really slick black and red adidas basketball shoes. (My shoes, by the way, are black and red adidas basketball kicks. They’re sweet.)

He and his cig are staring at me, so I nod, say thank you and he lights me up. It’s not unusual to have someone offer me a cigarette and that is the climax of our interaction, the only thing we’re able to communicate. But it turns out this guy speaks a bit of English. He is 27 years-old, his name is Wang (with a short A sound) and he works for whoever it is that controls the city’s buses.

“Are you a driver?” I ask, guiding a fake steering wheel with my hands, one of which is holding a burning cigarette.

“No, no,” he says, taking a drag. “I work in office. I do the paper.”

I tell him that I’m a teacher and continue to probe just how well he knows English. I ask him how long he’s been playing basketball, and he tells me that he started in middle school but had to quit in high school because he “hurt this,” pointing to his lower-back. I ask about the NBA and which players he likes.

“The Chinese players – Yao Ming and Yi Jianlian,” he says with a smile, like he’s embarrassed at the predictability of this answer. “And James,” he adds, referring to LeBron James. “Superman!”

I laugh and agree. Indeed, LeBron is Superman. Just that morning – when it was still last night in the States – LeBron had one of the more outlandish plays I’ve ever seen, fielding an errant alley-oop pass and turning it into a reverse dunk. Exactly like Superman. (The kicker was that the guy who made the pass, Delonte West, was fouled and the basket didn’t count. But the crowd nonetheless went bonkers, and in a matter of hours videos started cropping up all over the Internet. It lent credence to Wang’s sentiment: LeBron is Superman.)

The game that is going on reaches five pretty quickly, before we are done with our cigarettes. We ditch them and go back out there, set to take on that tall team which has now won a few in a row. They continue their reign of dominance, simply out-sizing us. A pretty athletic dude is guarding me, I can’t hit a shot, and before I know it I’m being offered a cigarette on the sidelines.

We play a few more games and my team collectively decides to scatter after another loss. The team captain with pine-cone hair puts on a puffy blue-purple jacket and says goodbye. I walk over to Wang and ask for his phone number, and he responds as though he was thinking about a number exchange himself. We swap info, and he says, “Sometime you are free…some beer!” He goes bottoms-up on an imaginary beer; I nod excitedly and tell him I like beer. I then mosey back over to my bike and take off, happy at the thought that I’ve made my first friend of my Chinese basketball season.

Spring's First Cameo

It is so gorgeous outside that even the trash takes on a beautiful aura.

The popular Buddhist author Thich Nhat Hahn often writes that good and bad are relative terms. The idea is that what we think of as “bad” actually forms the foundation for all that is “good.” For instance, we can’t appreciate how great it is to have a tall glass of water unless we’ve experienced true thirst. Similarly, it can be that much more special spending time with family and friends if you’ve felt the pangs of separation. The bad things – thirst or being removed from the ones we love – can make seemingly mundane things spectacular. In that sense, there is good buried even within the bad.

“If we look deeply at the rose,” Thich Nhat Hahn writes, “we see the garbage; if we look deeply at the garbage, we see the rose.” Make sense?

Well, this phenomenon is in full force today, February 23, here in Jinan. Spring has made a startling cameo appearance, and it’s incredible.

The winter in Jinan can best be described as bleak. The smog obscures the sun like that fuzzy blob that obscures a breast or middle finger on network TV. Plus Jinan is on the east side of China, so even if the sun does pierce its way through the smog, it’ll start to set really early, like before five. After four solid months of dark, biting weather – the garbage – the city broke free from the shackles of winter on February 23, awaking to a blissfully sunny and smog-free day – a rose made all the more beautiful by what preceded it. February 23, is a beautiful day by any standard; I reckon it would have passed muster even in San Diego. But the fact that it comes on the heels of four months of crap, well, that makes the sun seem a few shades brighter, the soft breeze a little more ticklish.

There is a strong but not overbearing wind that sends leaves, hair and trash aflutter. It is so gorgeous outside that even the trash takes on a beautiful aura. I see one black plastic bag drifting effortlessly through the sky as high as a three-story building, and it looks almost majestic. The kid from American Beauty would be in heaven. The wind infuses the air with just the tiniest chill, but the sun is strong enough to regulate things.

For the first time since I’ve been in Jinan, it simply feels like spring. And ever since I was about five-years-old, spring meant basketball.

So I make the jaunt over to Shandong Normal University, where much of my social experiment on basketball will take place. I played at SNU maybe a half-dozen time before the weather forbade it, but this is the first time that I’ve been to the court since I decided to embark upon this blogual adventure. It reaffirms some of my beliefs about basketball in China, namely that it’s hugely popular and quite different than basketball in America. Every one of the 22 courts (there would be 24 but for some broken rims) on the concrete swath is occupied by people playing varying brands of basketball. Some of them are just lazily shooting around. Some are playing games but not keeping score. Some people are just watching. This is a perfect day to play basketball – at least the most perfect out of the last 120 – and people have heeded the weather’s invitation.

I set up shop on the first court inside the gates that flow into this sprawl of courts. That’s where I remember the most competitive games being played last fall; per location, it is seemingly Court No. 1 in the literal and figurative sense. One tip-off that it’s a competitive court is that they are keeping score, and not everyone does that here. I plop my backpack down next to the court, tear off my Kansas Jayhawks hoodie and watch the action unfold, letting it be known via body language – the only language I share with these guys – that I am trying to get in the next game. And I do.

My squad is comprised of myself, two other English teachers – Antuan from Kentucky and James from North Carolina – and a Chinese onlooker selected at random. (OK, it isn’t totally random; he is kind of tall.)

Situated where it is, right next to the gate funneling people into the sprawling patch of courts, Court No. 1 is easily visible to anyone walking along the adjacent walkway, which is a popular thoroughfare for SNU students. And anyone who happens to be walking by on the afternoon of February 23 sees a 5-11 white guy with auburn hair (me), a 5-8 black guy with the knotted seedlings of dreadlocks (Antuan), and another black guy who is shaped like a boulder (James). We are the only non-Chinese people playing and quite possibly the only non-Chinese people that a lot of SNU students have ever seen hooping there. Add to it the fact that we are squaring off in four-on-four games against yellow-skinned, black-haired Chinese dudes, then you could have bet that a crowd would gather. And you would have won that bet.

Almost immediately, the viewing gallery – which moments ago housed but four 20-something-year-old Chinese guys waiting to play the next game – is a hot ticket. It’s not standing room only, but the crowd quickly swells to more than 15. And it isn’t just guys waiting to square off with the winning side. College-aged girls and older Chinese men and women – people who have no interest in playing and, moments ago, no interest in watching – park themselves next to the court to view. They leave as soon as our game ends, and largely because I shoot a paltry one-for-five, our game ends quickly, in defeat.

Being treated as something of a spectacle is nothing new for me here in Jinan. While this city is a provincial capital, it sure as hell isn’t a tourist destination. It’s a one-hour flight to Beijing and only slightly further to Shanghai, so if any tourists are plodding around this part of China, they won’t make time for Jinan – nor, for that matter, should they. Furthermore, Jinan isn’t much of an international business hub. In many of China’s larger cities, white people abound – Europeans, Americans, Australians, Canadians, all tapping China’s vast and ever-expanding economy. But not in Jinan. Almost all foreigners here are either English teachers or studying Chinese, and both of those groups are tiny. Thus, Chinese people here aren’t accustomed to seeing non-Chinese people, and they’re really bad at disguising their curiosity. On buses, at restaurants, on sidewalks – Jinanese people stare unabashedly at foreigners, unafraid to train their eyes on us as we walk past, like someone may eye a fish swimming the length of an aquarium. Often, they’ll shout “Halloo” at our backs after we’ve walked by. In a sense, it’s cute; in another sense, it’s exceptionally annoying. Either way, that’s how it is.

So it’s no surprise when we take to the court and people gather around. It’s not so much that were stars. It’s that we’re spectacles. And this is a phenomenon that I hope dissipates as my trips to SNU become more and more frequent. I want to just be one of the guys, so to speak, without the “Oh my God there’s a white person out there!” hoopla. And hoopla really isn’t too strong of a word. SNU students are pointing and whispering and snapping photos with their phones. Along with the mini-throng gathered along the court, there is a row of people peering through the adjacent fence. Comparing it to a zoo isn’t that much of an exaggeration.

Here's Antuan posing for a photo. It's not a celebrity effect. More of an animal-at-a-zoo effect.

Now, having good-looking college girls gawking at me – while I do something that I happen to be good at – isn’t the worst thing in the world. But at some point, I hope I cease to be so noteworthy. I’ll trade the cute-Asian-girl scenery for a chance to meld into the scene at large.

Telander, whose white skin was similarly atypical on the courts of Harlem, discussed this phenomenon in the introduction to Heaven Is a Playground:

I have tried not to evaluate the events overly much, just as I tried my best during the summer to stay out of the way, to let things happen in natural fashion. I dressed pretty much as everyone else did (shorts, sneakers, later on a golf hat and an ABA wristband) and I played ball, ate, drank, and laughed much as they did. Certainly I was visible, but I feel I overtly affected very little…

I hope to replicate Telander’s savvy. By virtue of my skin, I will never not stick out. But by virtue of my consistent and persistent presence at the courts, I hope to eventually become, if nothing else, a regular, someone who it would be strange not to see for a while.

There are other things I notice on February 23. The attire, for instance, which swings wildly in different directions. One player is wearing “Jordan” brand digs from head-to-toe – t-shirt, pants and sneakers – while another player is wearing jeans and leather dress shoes. This disparity isn’t uncommon. Also – and this, like the optional-scorekeeping, strikes me as odd – guys smoke a lot of cigarettes between games. In the States, the between-game ritual is to scurry to the water fountain or check your cell phone; here they light up cigs. Furthermore, there is an interesting friendly-hostile dynamic that I haven’t figured out. For instance, I was absolutely bowled over at one point by a particularly zealous player who drove at me as though there were a price on my head (did he resent my presence?). But after the game, as he smokes a cigarette, he utters one of the few English words he knows: Sorry. I respond by unloading about half of my Chinese vocabulary on him: “No problem,” I say. “You’re very good at basketball.” It probably comes off as the English equivalent to “Not problem. You basketball, good.” But hey, I think he appreciates the effort.

***

Winter returned a few days later, nixing basketball and setting the backdrop for one of the truly bizarre moments of my life. True to the stereotype, Chinese people love fireworks – honest to God, there are literally fireworks going off as I write this sentence at 11:30 in the morning. And on February 28, the day of China’s Lantern Festival – loosely described to me as China’s Valentine’s Day – there were fireworks galore, more than I’d seen in my six months in China. And that’s saying something. What tipped it from odd to downright wild was this: it was snowing hard – easily the hardest snowfall of the winter. People were spilling on the sidewalks, socks didn’t stand a chance of staying dry, it was nasty. But despite the snow, fireworks were exploding everywhere when I went out to dinner. I can’t exaggerate the ubiquity of fireworks that evening. From 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., you could see them in every direction hear them literally every second.

My mind was blown: a dastardly snowfall sharing airspace with constant fireworks for hours on end. Almost as strange, I suppose, as a white dude from Kansas sharing the basketball court with a bunch of Chinese guys in Jinan for hours on end. Maybe some day it will all seem normal.