The choice matters. The honour, for instance, could have gone to Liu Xiang, who became an instant icon when he won the 100 m hurdles at Athens, the first Chinese male to get an athletics gold medal. In contrast, for all his success in America as a basketballer with the Houston Rockets, Yao is part of a national basketball team placed eighth at Athens. And nobody is putting pressure on the team with expectations of a gold this time.

It is also a little more than a coincidence that, as the China Daily noted today, for the past six Olympics, beginning Los Angeles 1984, men’s basketball players have been China’s flag-bearers. (China, of course, returned to the Games in 1984, so calculate the percentage.)

Basketball is fast becoming China’s favourite sport, and the toughest tickets, say local reporters, to acquire for these Games, after to the opening ceremony, are for the China-US basketball tie on August 10. “I imagine it will be crazy,” laughs Jiang Yi, a writer with the Chinese edition of Sports Illustrated. “It is the most anticipated event after the opening ceremony.”

China Daily, in a front page report, echoed the excitement: “The game...has attracted the attention of even the two countries’ top leaders.” It continued: “The August 10 basketball China-US match has been compared to the ping-pong diplomacy of 1971, which set the base for China-US exchanges during the Cold War. Only this time, the foundation will be expanded and strengthened.” So, President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao have dropped by to meet the team and ask after Yao’s foot injury this February.

Elsewhere in the newspaper was a report about American cheerleaders, Chinese troupes and a Ukrainian dance group “all set for the razzle dazzle” of the match.

Some narratives to account for China’s desire to excel at basketball are similar to the one in India inquiring into its obsession with cricket, a story going back to the first encounters with Western colonialists. Basketball, notes writer Xu Guoqi, came to China with the YMCA missionaries carrying “the thirteen rules of basketball” just years after the game had been invented in 1891.

Jiang sees the current obsession in more contemporary terms. There are two factors, he says. One, China’s failure to break into football’s serious league. Two, the appeal of the NBA. “The NBA is very much related to the American and pop culture,” he explains. It ties in very well with the hip-hop and the bling-bling so attractive to the urban youth.

The NBA is broadcast live each season, and the popularity can be gauged by the sale of 400 million NBA-branded products in the country in 2005. So, the match-up on August 10 could extract excruciatingly complex emotions, says Jiang. He can’t keep the excitement out of his voice: “We will be tortured.” Millions like him “love” Yao Ming, they want to see China do well. But they also want to see something spectacular from American NBA star Kobe Bryant.

Can it get any tougher than that?