"I Believe You Can Fly": Basketball Culture in Postsocialist China

During the summer of 1998, more than half a million basketball fans all over China purchased copies of the magazine Lanqiu (Basketball), published by the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), the Chinese official state basketball bureaucracy.2 The magazine's flashy covers promised details on such subjects as "Can Utah Strum Some 'Jazz' and Again Become an NBA Powed" "An Illumi._ nating Record of the PLA [People's Liberation Army] Capturing the Men's Championship," "The CBA's Flaws and Future Hopes," and "Conversations with the Flier Uordan]."3 Thus drawn in, fans gladly paid ¥4.20 for the forty. eight-page issues full of photos and news of basketball leagues-professional and amateur, men's and women's, Chinese and international. As readers eagerly opened the magazine to get to the heart of these issues, they saw on the front inside cover a tempting advertisement for Beijing.based Handsun Footwear, which teased in bold print, "Do you dream of slam-dunking [a basketball]? Maybe you could."4 What Handsun offered, for ¥623 (plus ¥30 shipping and handling, for a total of some U.S.$80), was a "revolutionary" new training shoe that would strengthen the wearer's calf muscles so dramatically that he would be able "to casually do things on the basketball court that before could only flash across your mind." This company prepared to fulfill the dreams of millions of Chinese young people-for a lower price than even a new pair of