Yao Ming to marry this summer

Get ready with your jokes about a really big wedding: According to the Chinese state press, Houston Rocket Yao Ming will marry his girlfriend of eight years in August. Yao, 27, and Ye Li, 25, met in 1999 when Yao was playing for the Shanghai Sharks men's team and Ye was playing for the club's women's team. Since then, Ye — who's 6 feet, 2 inches tall herself — has gone on to play for the Chinese national women's team, but she's suffered from injuries in recent years. Ye is reportedly a frequent visitor to Yao's home here, and she's even studied English at the University of Houston.

Yao is expected to go to China for training in July and will play with the national team in September, so it would make sense that the wedding would fall in August. The ceremony will be private and might be held in Shanghai, where both Yao and Ye were born. But it looks like the wedding won't be broadcast live on TV: Despite rumors to that effect, the newspaper Titan Sports reported that "on that day there will be no media. Basically, it will only be relatives from both sides attending." Ah well.

Yao and Ye have kept their relationship pretty private: "Everyone wants to know [about it], so I am not going to tell you," Yao said in an online chat last summer. So there.