A story from the Far East: KD and J-Hard go to China

Daily Thunder reader Xiaoyu Lu was lucky enough to be one of the locals to escort Kevin Durant and James Harden around town. Here’s his account of hanging with two of the Broingtons for a couple of days in China. Also, the picture above is of a gift that was given to KD when he arrived.

Kevin Durant and James Harden just came to China for a tour last week. Fortunately, I was able to be one of the four City Ambassadors of Beijing to show them around here, and my friends did the same thing in Chengdu and Shanghai.

During his tour in China, Durant visited the Forbidden City and the Great Wall in Beijing. The magnificence of the Forbidden City surely surprised Durant and Harden, for they cannot stop saying words like amazing and crazy. And on the Great Wall, Harden kept saying he was scared.

In Chengdu, Durant and Harden went to see some pandas in the zoo and face-mask art in a tea house. In Shanghai, they visited the US Pavilion and China Pavilion EXPO and showed great interest in the pandas. I can see that Durant was quite interested in China, however, due to his busy schedule and great difficulty in understanding a quite different culture, became bored sometimes that he began tweeting along with his Blackberry.

The two really made some impressions. On our first meeting, Kevin Durant, the scoring champion and one superstar astounded me by saying what’s up to me first. Harden’s beard was so distinguishing that I can tell from eight miles away. He was so outgoing that I guess anybody can make a friend of him in five minutes. During the whole trip, they stayed with each other like twins, though already famous, Durant never boasted about himself and responded to every question modestly.

In KD Skills Clinic, a drill in which Durant and Harden needed to take part with other young players from high schools, they made very good examples. They both practiced hard, finish every missed shot and showed great commitment. They never stopped communicating with each other, also encouraging their teammates.

Special thanks to Xiaoyu Lu for the post. He writes at HoopChina and covers the Thunder from there.