TAIPEI, Taiwan — In bookish Taiwan, the outdoor complex of basketball courts near National Taiwan University is normally a pretty lonely place, more used to hosting raindrops and discarded food wrappers than pivoting feet and jump shots.
Wearing homemade caps with the Chinese name character "Lin" and team number "17" of NBA Knicks' Taiwanese-American Jeremy Lin, Tsai Shu-fan, left, and Huang Wan Fen, 22, watch him play against the Sacramento Kings at a local sports bar in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012. AP
All that is starting to change as the island of 23 million people enters its fourth week of Linsanity, the worldwide phenomenon following the improbable success of New York Knicks guard Jeremy Lin, whose parents spent their formative years in the central Taiwanese county of Changhua.
Though Lin himself was born and raised in the United States, Taiwan is proud to claim him as its own. It sees in him the same virtues Taiwanese say propelled their island from agricultural backwater to high-tech powerhouse: hard work, devotion to family and modesty.