digg

Join DiggAbout

Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.

NBA star Yao Ming swears off sharks fin soup in wildlife protection campain

nwfdailynews.com — NBA star Yao Ming pledged Wednesday to give up eating shark's fin soup, a Chinese delicacy, as he joined a campaign to promote wildlife protection. "Endangered species are our friends," Yao said at a news conference organized by the London-based conservation group WildAid.

Bury
show profanity settings
expand all
  • CaseyUCF, on 10/12/2007, -26/+6lame
  • andrebrown, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15Imagine the headlines. "A tall man, with a taller heart".

    Cheesiness insues.
    • invader, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2c'mon.. where are the spelling police on this one??
    • Aiwanei, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"c'mon.. where are the spelling police on this one??"
      They went out for a cup of shark-fin soup.
    • InferiorWang, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3*cough* ensues *cough*
  • icefrakker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14"Endangered species are our friends"

    i mean come on, couldnt they get a better slogan?
    like "dont bite me, i wont bite you"
  • jeet404, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I never had shark but gotta try it now....j/k to all the wildlife people

    I will stick with my deep fried catfish.
  • BlindIrishman, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21For Every Shark you don't eat, I'm eating three.
    • icefrakker, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2lol maddox could own mao at basketball anyday
  • Lifestory, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3NBA probably offered him the same deal they gave ABA if he stop eating them.
  • cwalk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Yao was quoted as saying "Say NO to Sharks fin soup and YES to Panda burgers"
  • def1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Is this supposed to be a sacrifice? One form of one type of food? Lame.
  • bigtrouble77, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Yao Ming is such an attention whore. It's not like we don't know it's shark week on Discovery. I wasn't born yesterday...
    • vuzman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I thought shark week on Discovery was even week numbers?
  • mackdaddy187, on 10/12/2007, -13/+2Ting Tong Tang
  • mictlanian, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16"Fish are friends, not food!"
  • infiniti029, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8For those that have never tried it, Shark Fin Soup tastes DAMN good.
  • nightchrome, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Like the shark wouldn't eat him if given half a chance.
    Friends? Right.
  • seibed, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Sharks Fin soup is nasty anyway. even when the locals say "oh you must have had bad sharks fin soup, you must try it from so-and-so, who does it truly well"... it still sucks. It's like someone shot out a big ol' snot from when you start getting a cold, still some consistency to it, but it hasn't gone all green yet. Add some beef broth and make it luke warm and there you go.
    • invader, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8it DOES sound like you had bad sharks fin soup! you should try it from.....

      /jk
  • canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4as a rockets fan i just hope he swears off being such a p***y in the lane
    • jeffiscool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Amen to that. Let's hope next season he plays like he did before breaking his foot.
  • Piper7865, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Don't fool yourself Billy if a shark ever got a chance he'd eat you and everyone you love.
  • foobar5892, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Too bad there's going to be more people who will try some shark fin soup after all the publicity it has garnered than people who are vain enough to stop eating it. Not to mention these animal friends wouldn't be eating shark fin soup to begin with.
    • foobar5892, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh, by the way. Good on ya, Mr. Ming for being famous enough to pretend changes in your eating habits are any more important than the next guy's. Hey, I swore off eating endangered snails and I'm not shoving my accusing finger into anybody's nostrils.
  • Colbear, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm not against eating sharks - they are delicious. I've been shark fishing before too.

    This article fails to highlight why shark fin soup shouldn't be eaten; the answer shouldn't strictly be that sharks are endangered, rather how they're reaching this point off the coasts of China. Sharks are deliberately killed solely for the fin and dumped back into the ocean. This isn't practice I would ever support. I've always vowed never to eat shark fin soup for this reason alone more so than the threat of the population. I live in the United States though. if I lived in China I'd probably boycott shark altogether.
  • RogerRabbit, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Yao says. "Sark goood", "shark frieend"
  • andrebrown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I must say, after reading this, I feel more inclined than before to try Shark Fin soup.
  • MrJiggs, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Though I applaud Yao for this gesture, more needs to be done. As has been said, the sharks are "harvested" by catching them, tearing off their fins, then simply tossed back into the ocean to die slowly - a detestable practice. All this for a product that has little to no taste, and negligible medicinal value (why it was originally eaten). Having eaten shark's fin when I was a child, I can tell you that if you like the taste, it's completely due to the spices added to the water; little to no flavour is added by the fin. In fact, more often than not, it's false shark fin that is in the typical shark's fin soup nowadays, due to the scarcity of real sharks fin (and its commensurately high price).

    The Chinese community needs to educate itself and stand against the wholesale slaughter of animals that are rapidly nearing extinction. While I see most of my fellow readers pooh-poohing Yao's involvement, we need more well-known public figures to step forward with their support, as the situation is never going to change without publicity. As it stands, most Chinese continue to abuse wildlife with little to no thought towards conservation or ethics. The worst part is that all of this is due to millenia old beliefs in their medicinal benefits - claims that have simply been exaggerated, if not completely falsified by word of mouth and those that traffic in their quasi-legal trade.
    Did you know that seahorses are an endangered species almost entirely due to their purported "medicinal" value by the Chinese?
    http://www.worldwildlife.org/trade/seahorses.cfm
    How about the endangered South Chinese Tiger, who continue to be harvested for their bones, penises (!), and eyes?
    http://tigersincrisis.com/problems_2.cfm
    How about the illegal trade of the endangered Black Bear bile?
    http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?module=2&menupos=6&submenupos=1&lg=en

    Why do we need a tiger's penis as an aphrodisiac when we have drugs (Cialis, Viagra, etc) that are cheaper and more effective? Did you know that there are 54 different cruelty-free alternatives to bear bile? These are just a few examples of the kind of uncontrolled greed that is rampant not only in China, but in the entire region (HK, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc), greed that is predicated on vanity, fear, and ignorance. This blind belief in age-old remedies are destroying intricate ecologies that will never recover if we do not educate ourselves and stop the damage!

    ps. I am not disagreeing with the medicinal properties of these animals, but medical proof of their efficacy is the last thing the crooks that sell them want. They would rather continue duping clients into believing that they all work, continuing to dupe their clients into more and more costly and obscure drugs, so they can continue to profit. At the rate we're going, whatever real medicinal impact traditional animal medicine may contain will be irrelevant within the next 20 years, as most of them will be extinct.

    pps. I'm half-Chinese, and I'm sick of the laissez-faire attitude most Chinese I know have about the beliefs of their relatives/family/friends when it comes to traditional cures. Most have no idea the kind of damage this "harmless" belief wreaks on these animals.

    One final link, the WWF's link on Traditional Chinese Medicine:
    http://www.worldwildlife.org/trade/tcm.cfm

    J
    • KingMoses, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1"...abuse wildlife with little to no thought towards [] ethics."
      "cruelty-free alternatives"

      Are you kidding me?
      They are animals, they are not people. The treatment of an animal is not morally equivalent to the treatment of a human, okay? There is nothing unethical about killing animals in order to get something we need or want; it's in fact part of the natural order. Human beings are the dominant and greatest species on this planet because we're the most badass when it comes to that very thing.
    • hmmm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Although I agree with you on the medicinal value of animal parts, I'd have to disagree when you say shark fin has "little to no taste." No spices are needed to get any taste. Try cooking it in a clear soup and add a little salt (what soup doesn't contain salt?). I assure you there is a very significant taste coming from the shark's fin. It's trivial to differentiate between fake and real shark fin soup. And no, this isn't like arguing the subtle differences between CD's and mp3's.

      I'm not condoning the consumption of shark fin soup. But it's hard to change the minds of people when they've been taught stuff like shark fin soup implies success.
    • KingMoses, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1You hippies are unbelievable.
  • NSMike, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"Endangered Species are our friends... And they're tasty too!"
  • origclubsoda, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0There goes his sex life.
  • romeohifi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I wouldn't be suprised that him playing in the US has something to do with his view on wildlife protection. I bet if he were in China his view would have been different. It is great to be living in US.
  • supergwiz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is inaccurate, Yao said he swears off SHAQ, it got lost in the translation
  • datastorageguy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Wow what sacrifice.....
  • pexor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"Yao also is to appear in a conservation advertising campaign for wildlife other than sharks.

    A television commercial shown at Yao's news conference features the 2.16-meter (7-foot-1) center jumping up from a basketball court to block a bullet fired at an elephant."

    Am I the only one that found this hilarious? I can't imagine this commercial without laughing a little bit.
  • bchang, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Man I love shark fin soup I get it alot when i go to weddings and Dim Sum its really good I guess I should stop.
  • Jeppy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2ummmm.....so. Who cares....
  • JonDiggsIt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1haha this story is hilarious... i'm sorry i just have to laugh... he campaigns for wildlife protection by giving up soup. its yao ming the only thing he knows how to do is get stuffed by shaq
  • xinul, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1MOAR SHARK FIN SOUP FOR ME KEKEKKEKE ^_^
  • merdiesel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"haha this story is hilarious... i'm sorry i just have to laugh... he campaigns for wildlife protection by giving up soup. its yao ming the only thing he knows how to do is get stuffed by shaq"


    No matter what his skills are in the NBA, there no doubt that hes the biggest Icon in China out of the past 50+ years and has a ton of influence on the people of China. Yao swearing off this ***** up soup is pretty cool of him.

  • googli, on 06/13/2008, -0/+0I think the following link on that site was more interesting:

    buy viagra http://tabletta.com/

    buy cialis http://tabletta.org/

    buy levitra http://youtubuy.org/
  •  

    Login or register to add a comment

    Create a new account or login to join in the conversation on Digg. You'll also be able to Digg stories to help promote things you like.


© Digg Inc. 2008 — Content posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain.
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.