Jim Yardley
The wonderfully original story of a struggling Chinese basketball team and its quixotic, often comical attempt to right its fortunes by copying the American stars of the NBAâ€”a season of cultural misunderstanding that transcends sports and reveals Chinaâ€™s ambivalent relationship with the West., Â , When the Shanxi Brave Dragons, one of Chinaâ€™s worst professional basketball teams, hired former NBA coach Bob Weiss, the teamâ€™s owner, Boss Wang, promised that Weiss would be allowed to Americanize his players by teaching them â€œadvanced basketball culture.â€ That promise would be broken from the moment Weiss landed in China. Desperate for his team to play like Americans, Wangâ€”a peasant turned steel tycoonâ€”nevertheless refused to allow his players the freedom and individual expression necessary to truly change their games., Â , Former ,New York Times, Beijing bureau chief Jim Yardley tells the story of the resulting culture clash with sensitivity and a keen comic sensibility. Readers meet the Brave Dragons, a cast of colorful, sometimes heartbreaking oddballs from around the world: the ambitious Chinese assistant coach, Liu Tie, who believes that Chinese players are genetically inferior and can improve only through the repetitious drilling once advocated by ancient kung fu masters; the moody and selfish American import, Bonzi Wells, a former NBA star so unnerved by China that initially he locks himself in his apartment; the Taiwanese point guard, Little Sun, who is demonized by his mainland Chinese coaches; and the other Chinese players, whose lives sometimes seem little different from those of factory workers. , Â , As readers follow the team on a fascinating road trip through modern Chinaâ€”from glamorous Shanghai and bureaucratic Beijing to the booming port city Tianjin and the polluted coal capital of Taiyuanâ€”we see Weiss learn firsthand what so many other foreigners in China have discovered: China changes only when and how it wants to change.
Sports,Sports,Nonfiction,Cultural,China,Sports,Basketball,Cultural,Asia,Travel,History,Biography
Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing