Basketball, in America, is like a culture. It is like a foreigner learning a new language. It is difficult to learn foreign languages and it will also be difficult for me to learn the culture for basketball here.

I only want to play basketball, and play it well and be happy about it. But I realize that with being famous, comes a lot of demands.

All of the Chinese people, the Asian people say, "Oh Yao Ming, you are all the Chinese, all of Asia's hopes." That's a lot of pressure. I'm just a basketball player.

Sport is the best means of communication between people from different religions and countries.

Moving to the US was quite a transition for me, to say the least! There were, and still are so many new things to get used to: the language, food, culture, even the style of basketball is different here!

Westerners respect privacy, and they are very competitive in terms of work and personalities. My teammates in China and I can talk about everything. But with my Houston Rockets teammates, even though we're friends, we cannot ask each other about everything.

Endangered species are our friends.