The Giant Who Was Afraid to Leave His House
Mu Tiezhu, center for the Chinese men’s basketball team, stood 2.28 meters tall. He was the face of Chinese basketball in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In a 1979 friendly against the NBA’s Washington Bullets, he scored more points than anyone on the floor—against the reigning world champions. He never played in the NBA. He died in 2008, weighing over three hundred pounds. As a child in rural Shandong, he was too afraid to leave his house. The villagers thought he was a monster._
Dongming County, Shandong Province, late 1950s. A boy began to grow.
At ten, he stood a head taller than his classmates. At twelve, he towered over most adults in the village. By fifteen, he had passed two meters—and in rural Shandong in those years, no one had ever seen a person over two meters. The villagers said he had giantism. Children ran from him. Adults regarded him as some kind of ill omen. He began staying inside, hiding from the stares. His father was an ordinary farmer. His mother’s back was bent from a lifetime of labor. Neither of them was tall. No one could explain why this child had become what he was.
His name was Mu Tiezhu. Tiezhu—iron pillar.
His height imprisoned him at home. He did not yet know that it was the very thing that would soon carry him out of the village, to cities he had never seen, to a name he had only heard on the radio: the national team.
In 1968, a sports school coach traveled through the countryside searching for talent. At a market in Dongming County, he saw a giant—a young man sitting by the roadside, head lowered, eyes avoiding everyone. The coach walked over, said a few words, and took him away. Mu Tiezhu started playing basketball when he was nearly twenty years old—almost a decade later than most players begin. He had never touched a basketball until adulthood. He did not know the rules, did not know how to shoot, did not know how to dribble. He knew only one thing: he could put the ball into the hoop without jumping.
By the late 1970s, Mu Tiezhu was the starting center for the Chinese national team. He was the first true giant in Chinese basketball history. At 2.28 meters, he was tall even by global standards. In the summer of 1979, the NBA’s Washington Bullets—reigning world champions—came to China for a friendly series. The Bullets featured Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld, both future Hall of Famers. China lost the game. But Mu Tiezhu scored more points than anyone else on the floor. He planted himself in the paint against the NBA champions and stood there like an iron pillar.
Chinese basketball in that era was nothing like today. No CBA, no commercial league, no shoe contracts. Playing for the national team meant representing the nation. Honor was the only compensation. Mu Tiezhu played for the national team for more than a decade. After he retired, Chinese basketball entered a new era. His body deteriorated quickly in retirement—a giant’s heart has to pump harder than an ordinary one. When he died in 2008, he weighed over three hundred pounds, and multiple complications took his life. But his name is inescapable in the history of Chinese basketball. Yao Ming once said that the first basketball player’s name he heard as a child was Mu Tiezhu.
The Shandong boy who was afraid to leave his house was remembered, in the end, by an entire nation.
