Massacres and Stephon Marbury: China and Foreign Basketball Players

January 13th, 2011 by Joshua Bird Leave a reply »
Upon reading recently that former NBA Star Stephon Marbury (left) was leaving his former Chinese team, Shanxi Zhongyu, after a year's service, my first thought was, 'wow he actually spent a whole season in Taiyuan!'

For the initiated, Taiyuan is the capital city of Shanxi Province, and one of the most highly industrialised city in northern China. Known as the 'coal-mining capital' of China it has little to recommend it to the average tourist, let alone the average former NBA-All Star.

Most visitors' views of the city are similar to those of this commenter on Chinatravel.net:

"It was definitely the most polluted city in PRC. If you think that the coal mining activities have done enough damage to the quality of the air there, wait till you see the amount of chain smokers there...And if that's not enough to put you off, personal hygiene is a huge problem there. Apart from spitting (well, I guess it's the same anywhere else in PRC but somehow, I think it's worst in Taiyuan), the ppl there dont really bath or change their clothes everyday. To make things worst, they don't really care for cleanliness of their surroundings as well...To ...

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