NBA star Yao Ming was nicknamed "The Great Wall of Yao" for his towering height at 229 cm.
He married Ye Li, a member of the Chinese national basketball team, in 2007, but the two had to live apart due to Yao's U.S. basketball career, the Chosun Ilbo reported.
When he took his pregnant wife to the U.S. in 2010, Chinese media accused him of having a so-called "anchor baby" who automatically gets U.S. citizenship by being born there.
Ye gave birth to a baby girl in the U.S. two months later, and millions of Yao's fans were incensed. China's Shenzhen region has a thriving business helping expecting mothers travel to Hong Kong to have their baby there.
It costs 100,000 yuan. Out of 95,000 babies who were born in Hong Kong in 2011, 44,000 were apparently anchor babies from mothers in China, most of them from wealthy and powerful families.
By having a baby in Hong Kong, Chinese women can avoid punitive measures against having more than one child and the baby gets a coveted Hong Kong passport, allowing him or her to travel to some 120 countries without a visa.
In the 19th century, the wives of British colonial officials in India endured long journeys across land and sea to have their babies back in Britain.
Even if their parents were of aristocratic stock, people born in the colonies were often discriminated against.
Usually, parents from less developed countries try to have babies in more advanced countries.
In 2003, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni sent his daughter and daughter-in-law to Germany to have their babies, admitting he does not trust doctors in his own country.
Until the early 2000s, around 7,000 Koreans a year went to the U.S., New Zealand and Canada to have their babies, and there was a thriving business based on the demand.
But the trend subsided after U.S. immigration and Korean law enforcement authorities began cracking down on the businesses.
Korea also changed its laws so that even boys who were born abroad must fulfill their mandatory military service if they want to maintain their Korean passports or ethnic privileges and live here.
The term "anchor baby" is slowly fading from popular discourse.
But last week Cho Hyun-ah, the eldest daughter of Hanjin Group chairman Cho Yang-ho and executive vice president of Korean Air, gave birth to twin boys in the U.S. She had suddenly been assigned to a U.S. subsidiary of the airline in early April.
A company official vowed Cho and her children "will fulfill their duties as Korean citizens." In 2009, a popular TV anchor who married the heir to a major business conglomerate, traveled to the U.S. just two months before her due date and had her son there.
Did these women really bear in mind a happy future for their children by making these decisions?