Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
This was what happened. Shaquille O’Neal arrived in Chengdu three days in advance with a low profile. During the first two days, he put on a hat and went out to stroll around the streets. He even went to restaurants to have a meal alone.
During those several days, he was quite safe and wasn’t recognized and surrounded by anyone. However, he prepared to stay for another two days just to eat and drink after the activity was over as he had witnessed Chengdu’s hotpot.
But he forgot that a warm-up was usually indispensable for any activity. On the day before the activity started, the organizer made it known to the public that he had arrived in Chengdu. Then, everybody found out that he was in Chengdu which caused a larger impact than when he was announced to be arriving.
As he hadn’t been recognized by others in the past few days, he didn’t try to disguise himself when he went out to a restaurant to eat the day before the activity. As a result, he finally witnessed the formidable force of Chinese basketball fans.
As soon as he entered a mall, he saw a nice restaurant which mainly served Cantonese Cuisine. The business was extraordinarily good at around noon.
It was still a little cool in April in Chengdu. Dressed in a white hoodie and light-colored jeans as well as a black peaked cap, he appeared at the front desk of the restaurant openly.
Shaquille O’Neal couldn’t speak Chinese, but everyone around was enthusiastic and they were willing to translate for him or spend time figuring out what he meant. That was according to his experiences these past few days.
Therefore, he wasn’t worried that he couldn’t order dishes.
As soon as Shaquille O’Neal was present at the entrance of the restaurant, he attracted the attention of the people around. He was just too tall. With his height of 2.16 meters, he was just like a giant. Along with the strong muscles on his body, he looked fairly frightening.
When he went out in the past few days, people who saw him didn’t link him to a basketball star as African-Americans were all usually tall and strong. But after the organizer started the continuous publicity today, his presence now was naturally more striking.
“Excuse me, are you Shaquille O’Neal, that great basketball star?” A person went up to him directly and asked impatiently.
“Yeah, are you that great basketball star?” Even the girl at the front desk of the restaurant couldn’t help asking him.
“You look like him very much. Can you sign your name for me?” A man with glasses behind him straightforwardly took out a notebook from his portable bag and handed it to Shaquille O’Neal. He looked quite excited and thrilled.
While the three people were asking him excitedly, those who had doubts inwardly also went up and surrounded to watch, in hopes to get a look at the graceful bearing of a great basketball star.
“Oh, no, no.” Shaquille O’Neal was still puzzled about the situation. After all, the people around all spoke Chinese.
However, he suddenly had a premonition in his heart. After all, not only the man with glasses but also the girl at the front desk began to hand their notebooks to him and ask for his signature.
He couldn’t understand Chinese, but he knew what the action of handing notebooks and asking for signature meant, as somebody had already done the same thing to him. Then, he figured out that he had been recognized by them. He raised his hands quickly and said ceaselessly, “No, no…” and tried to leave.
“Don’t leave, O’Neal. I’m your loyal fan. Please give me your signature, ok?” The man with glasses looked cultured, but he reacted swiftly when he asked for his favorite basketball star’s signature. He moved nimbly and crowded to the front of Shaquille O’Neal.
“No, I can’t.” Shaquille O’Neal began to raise his hand to cover his face and make a defensive gesture with the other and tried to get outside.
But obviously, he neglected that it was the nature of humankind to watch the fun. Seeing so many people around here, others around there naturally would come to see what happened, too.
Furthermore, it was lunchtime and there were lots of people around. More people arrived when they came closer and got to know it was a star inside. And many people, who weren’t fans of anybody and also didn’t know whom it was inside, just felt that they could see the star and thus crowded around. As a result, Shaquille O’Neal was completely surrounded by the onlookers.
“Isn’t that a football star?”
“No, he is a basketball star. So tall and so strong! He must be more than 2 meters.”
“Huh, this person really looks like that movie star.”
The crowd began to discuss heatedly. They didn’t agree with each other on whom the star was. Speaking of which, it couldn’t be helped. Other stars could deceive or mislead people by covering their face with something, but with O’Neal’s height and color of skin, he was simply a green spot among thousands of flowers.
“Oh, My god!” Seeing the people around him getting more and more, Shaquille O’Neal couldn’t help despairing. He took out his phone decisively and began to make calls for help.
He was naturally going to call his agent and ask for his help.
Having been surrounded, Shaquille O’Neal remained with the gesture of covering his face with one hand and making a defensive gesture with the other. Due to the language barrier, the onlookers were just excited and the situation wasn’t out of control.
Of course, he must thank the security guards of the mall who arrived in time and slightly handled the heat.
Those who arrived next were the reporters who were even quicker than sharks that had smelled blood. They arrived even earlier than Shaquille O’Neal’s agent by five minutes.
In the chaotic scene, the agent took Shaquille O’Neal to evade from the reporters, the fans, and onlookers and ran about wildly in the downtown area of Chengdu before they returned to the hotel.
Leaving aside how exhausted and how regretful Shaquille O’Neal and his agent were, they hadn’t even recovered from the fatigue by the time the activity started on the following day.
Once the opening ceremony ended, Shaquille O’Neal went straight to the airport and prepared to fly back to America under the protection of his agent and security guards.
The following interview and interactions with his fans were directly declined. Obviously, he was severely scarred by the accident yesterday.
“So that’s why you are now heaving great sighs, right? Because you failed in asking for his signature and interacting with him?” Wu Hai said to the point.
That’s right. It was the second day after Shaquille O’Neal left. Ling Hong was drinking beer in the pub with Wu Hai and Jiang Changxi.
Once in a blue moon, it was Wu Hai who treated them today, though he had always been stingy with food.
After all, he could drink beer more frequently than anybody else. He went for the lottery draw every day and naturally had high possibilities to get the liquor.
“Isn’t that miserable enough? I have prepared for a very long time and especially bought a Filofax notebook in order to keep his signature.” Ling Hong looked at Wu Hai contemptuously and drank a big mouthful of beer. He felt bitter in his heart.
“Not really. You are wasting my beer. You spoke so miserably in the Wechat group that I thought you had been abandoned by someone,” Wu Hai nodded his head and then said.
The reason why they gathered here was that Wu Hai asked Ling Hong in the group if he acted like Lu Xiaofeng1. Then, he was annoyed by Ling Hong talking about his misery and in the end, Wu Hai decided to treat them to beer.
“Siter Jiang, you reason things out for me. I’ve prepared for so long time but still didn’t get the signature. Now I’m drinking a little amount of his beer and he actually says I’m wasting his beer.” Ling Hong appeared quite dispirited. He looked at Jiang Changxi and tried to get some comforting words from her.
“You can buy his signature from others. There are definitely many sellers on the Internet,” Jiang Changxi said calmly.
“I just want a signature specially for me. Those are signed for others.” Ling Hong’s current feeling was that everybody was drunk except him and everybody was muddled except him.
Actually, many people also had that kind of feeling when they were completely drunk.
So it was clear now. What Ling Hong wanted was Shaquille O’Neal’s signature specially for him, reading like “To Ling Hong, ….” rather than a simple name of O’Neil.
