MCLC: Jeremy Lin an instant star in China

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Jeremy Lin an instant star in China
***********************************************************

Source: NYT 
(2/14/12):http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/sports/basketball/in-china-knic
ks-lin-emerges-as-a-star-and-a-symbol.html

In China, an Instant Star and an Emerging Symbol
By KEITH BRADSHER

HANGZHOU, China ‹ The clearest sign that Jeremy Lin¹s appeal has spanned
the Pacific to mainland China may lie not in the 1.4 million Chinese
microblog messages mentioning him in recent days, but in a rare failure to
meet demand here in the heart of one of the world¹s largest centers of
pirated garment manufacturing.

³His jerseys have sold out, even including the counterfeit ones,² said
Zheng Xiaojun, a 24-year-old clerk here in the capital of Zhejiang
province, near Shanghai.

Lin¹s stunning success with the Knicks over the last week and a half has
captured the imagination of the Chinese, from Communist Party bosses to
the often-persecuted Christian minority. He has been particularly popular
here in northern Zhejiang province, from which his maternal grandmother
fled to Taiwan in the last days of China¹s civil war in the late 1940s.

Lin is commonly described in the United States as Taiwanese-American
because his parents grew up in Taiwan before moving to the United States,
where Lin was born. But mainland China is already starting to claim him as
its own, part of an incessant rivalry across the Taiwan Strait.

Cai Qi, the organization chief for the Communist Party in Zhejiang, posted
a message on his Twitter-like microblog over the weekend claiming that
Lin¹s ancestral home is Jiaxing, a city on the northeastern outskirts of
Hangzhou where Lin¹s maternal grandmother grew up.

Since 1991, she and other family members have been giving several thousand
dollars a year to Jiaxing High School, according to the school¹s Web site.
Her nephew, Yu Guohua, is Lin¹s closest relative still living in northern
Zhejiang.

Yu, a 56-year-old former plastics factory worker who retired early on
disability after sustaining injuries in a car crash, said in a telephone
interview Tuesday night that Lin had come to play basketball with the
Jiaxing High School team last May and been mobbed by admirers.

Yu said he did not have a chance to meet Lin in the throng, but spoke with
his family. ³His father was very supportive of Lin¹s playing basketball,
but his grandmother was not, for fear he would be injured,² Yu said.

Lin may owe his height, 6 feet 3 inches, to his maternal grandmother¹s
family, Yu said. Chen Weiji, the father of Lin¹s grandmother, was well
over 6 feet and all of Chen¹s children were tall as well, he said.

Chen was a senior municipal civil servant in Jiaxing in the early 1900s.
American Protestant missionaries converted him to Christianity, and he
imparted his strong spiritual interests to his children, who liked to
discuss religious subjects in depth and read books on religion, Yu said.

Lin¹s combination of success in the N.B.A. and strong Christian faith ‹ he
has spoken in the past of becoming a pastor someday ‹ has fired the
imagination of many Asian-American Christians. There are some early signs
that he may also be catching the attention of Christians in China, who
continue to face varying levels of persecution.

Only 1,500 of the initial 1.4 million microblogging messages on mainland
Chinese web sites that mentioned Lin also mentioned Christianity.

But these messages tend to be fervently enthusiastic.

³Your physical agility has shown me the glory and omnipotence of God,² one
Internet user wrote.

³How should young Christians live the life of the Lord?² another blogger
wrote. ³We have a good example in Lin Shuhao¹s miraculous performance and
we should cheer him on.²

At the Zhejiang Theological Seminary here in Hangzhou, Professor Yan
Ronghui said that she was planning to use Lin¹s religious faith and
basketball successes as a model for students in her course in ³theological
English² this semester.

Hu Shubang, a 25-year-old student at the seminary, said that Lin would
become a natural symbol for Christians in China to use in seeking converts.

³Just by his being a Christian, it is a fantastic way to broadcast the
ways of Christ,² he said.

But awareness of Lin¹s faith is only starting to spread in China. State
news media have covered Lin¹s basketball exploits heavily but avoided
mentioning his faith, part of a broader pattern of omitting or censoring
religious subjects.

Hu guessed that maybe one in five of the men at the 180-student seminary
knew about Lin¹s faith, and almost none of the women. Chinese authorities
allow one Protestant seminary per province, as a way to limit the number
of pastors and slow the spread of Christianity, which by some estimates
may have more than 100 million adherents among China¹s 1.3 billion people.

Mao ordered the merger of Protestant denominations in China in 1958; while
different strands of Protestantism have informally re-emerged since Mao¹s
death in 1976, they must share a small supply of seminary graduates, and
other pastors trained at bible schools operating informally.

The N.B.A. has estimated 300 million people in China play basketball. The
retirement last year of Yao Ming, a basketball star from mainland China,
deprived the N.B.A. of its main Asian draw. But Lin¹s emergence has at
least temporarily strengthened the league as a centerpiece of Chinese
online chatter.

The highest-level fan may be Vice President Xi Jinping, the heir apparent
to become China¹s top leader for the next decade. He flew to Washington on
Monday to meet President Obama on Tuesday, and told The Washington Post in
a written response to questions
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/views-from-chinas-vice-pr
esident/2012/02/08/gIQATMyj9Q_story_2.html> that, ³I do watch N.B.A. games
on television when I have time.²

Hilda Wang contributed reporting.