Both Yao and his wife — once a centre on China’s women’s national basketball team — are the offspring of professional athletes. They reportedly married at the request of sports officials in their hometown of Shanghai.<\/p>\n
Ever since the 2.29-metre (seven-foot-six-inch) Yao married his 1.90-metre wife in 2007, speculation has run rampant as to when their first baby would be born, popular Internet portal Sina.com said.<\/p>\n
As both Yao and his wife were born in the 1980s and are only children, the couple will be allowed to give birth to two children under China’s recently relaxed “one-child” family planning policy, the report said.<\/p>\n
“We hope that Yao Ming and Ye Li will go further and raise more pillars of the next generation of Chinese basketball,” it said.<\/p>\n
In a Sina.com online poll, 76 percent of more than 29,000 people voting said that Yao’s child was likely to grow taller than 2.05 metres, while 33 percent said the baby would grow taller than 2.20 metres.<\/p>\n
Yao and his wife returned to China late last year to do promotional work for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and to launch the season of the Shanghai Sharks, a professional Chinese basketball club that Yao recently purchased.
\nThe photo below that headline is one of Yao Ming’s wedding pictures. Using the background landscape, the paper’s readers determined that the photo was taken at Qingshan Lake, in Lin’an, Hangzhou.<\/p>\n
The photo on the left side is a reader’s snapshot of a small tornado. Perhaps the tornado has some connection to approaching tropical storm Wutip (“butterfly”), as the second headline suggests.<\/p>\n