Yao Ming the giraffe led a short, difficult life. He was born last year, at the Houston Zoo, and stood six feet two inches tall-average for a newborn giraffe, but hardly tall enough to reach the shoulders of his namesake, the skyscraping Chinese former basketball star. Soon, Yao Ming the giraffe got sick. He developed an infection in his shoulder, followed by arthritis and cartilage damage in his hip. After just seven weeks, doctors decided that there was nothing left to do but put Yao Ming the giraffe to sleep.
Yao Ming the human could empathize: he was bred for basketball-his parents, both over six feet, had been 'encouraged' to partner up, as rumor has it-but injuries cut short his All-Star career, and, even before Yao Ming the giraffe's death, Yao Ming the human had decided to dedicate his post-basketball life to protecting animals 'bigger than me,' which is to say, not many. In 2006, inspired by several P.S.A.s in which Jackie Chan advocated on behalf of tigers, Yao led a campaign to protect sharks, whose appendages are sliced off to make shark-fin soup. Consumption dropped by more than half, and Yao turned his attention to the ivory and rhino-horn trades, filming a video for WildAid, the conservation group, in which he politely applauded as Prince William recited the campaign's slogan ('When the buying stops, the killing can, too') in muddled Mandarin.
Last week, Yao, who is seven and a half feet tall and noticeably heavier than his playing weight of three hundred and ten pounds, walked into the Central Park Zoo wearing a Reebok fleece, white Nike sneakers, and enough facial hair to suggest that he had left his razor in Shanghai, where he lives. He was in town for the première of his new Animal Planet documentary, 'Saving Africa's Giants with Yao Ming.' (Sample voice-over: 'One man is willing to stand as a Great Wall and defend elephants and rhino.') Yao made two trips to Africa, which had logistical difficulties. He couldn't find hiking boots in a size 18, and his head scraped the ceiling of a prop plane that was carrying him to a Kenyan elephant reserve-the sort of indignity that happens a lot. In midtown, on the way to the zoo, he had squeezed half his body into the front seat of a Lincoln Navigator, but couldn't maneuver his head past a handlebar on the doorframe. 'That's gonna be a problem,' he said, before walking to one of the back doors.
Yao had never been to Central Park-'Garden is not far from here?' he said, upon learning that he had played the Knicks nearby-let alone the zoo, so he took a zookeeper's recommendation and started in the Tropic Zone. 'Can I touch it?' he asked, spying a large blue bird within his reach but no one else's.
Yao was sweating in the Tropic Zone, so he made his way out to the snow monkeys. 'Why are their faces red?' he asked a volunteer. 'That's just the way they come,' she said. 'Their butts are red, too. And, when they're actually in mating season, they turn even brighter red.' Yao's face got a little red. The volunteer recommended the zoo's snow leopards, which are native to the Chinese Himalayas. No luck: Askai and Zoe were napping. On to the red-panda pen, where Yao took a photo of two bears sitting in a tree. He had always wanted a pet, but never owned one. 'My mom and my wife are scared of dogs and cats,' he said, with a shrug. 'Woman rules the house.'
After the tour, Yao took a break on a bench, but only after asking someone to sit on the other end as a counterweight. ('I don't want it to go flying!') As a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, he was pleased to learn that just that morning Presidents Obama and Xi had announced a landmark climate-change accord. 'Our two countries should set a model for the world,' he said, mentioning carbon emissions and ivory sales, both categories in which China and the U.S. rank worst and second-worst. Beyond activism, Yao was busy finishing an undergraduate degree in economics, and buying businesses: a basketball team (the Shanghai Sharks), a private-equity firm (Chongqing Yufu Assets Management Group), and a winery in Napa. Yao Family Wines were served at the documentary's première. The wines are available in China, though not, apparently, in the Great Hall of the People, where Obama and Xi had been photographed toasting their achievement with something other than the 2010 Yao Ming Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. 'Let's work on that!' Yao said, before walking across Fifth Avenue to the waiting Navigator. He had learned his lesson, and climbed straight into the back seat. ♦
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