Jackets warming up to 'Snow'

Extroverted tour guide gives team a lift during bus rides in Shanghai.

Yu Xue Feng had the

SHANGHAI— microphone aboard the Georgia Tech team bus, and he had a message for its passengers.

“The head coach is very tired,” said Yu, the Yellow Jackets’ tour guide this week in Shanghai.

Coach Josh Pastner had reason to be fatigued — jet lag, the stress of having three of his players ques- tioned by Chinese police (before being cleared) and the preparation for the season opener against powerhouse UCLA on Saturday.

And with that recognition of Pastner’s physical state, Yu began to sing a medley, including Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” her 2007 smash hit.

Aboard the Tech bus, cheers broke out. Members of the traveling party trained their smartphones on the ponytailed Yu. The bus rolled on, transporting a team that, most improbably, has gotten an energy lift during a challenging week from its 33-year-old tour guide.

“Hopefully, we’ll move forward and hopefully we’ll win, and he’ll

be just as big a part of our cel- ebration as we will,” strength and conditioning coach Dan Taylor said.

With the Tech traveling party, Yu goes by “Snow,” a literal translation of his given name, which means “snow peak.” It was bestowed upon him by an uncle who wanted him to “reach the top of my life,” said Yu, whose name is pronounced Oo Sheweh Fung.

However he considers this week as part of that climb, Yu has helped create a week the Jackets won’t soon forget.

“Snow, he’s a funny guy,” guard Justin Moore said. “He’s doing his job of keeping us entertained on the bus rides, but he’s a cool guy.”

Yu can tell you that the Shanghai Tower is 632 meters high, about the city’s transformation from fishing vil- lage to the nation’s financial capital, that basketball great and Shanghai native Yao Ming weighed 11 pounds at birth.

It would stand to reason. Yu trained three months to earn his tour-guide certifica- tion. He has been a tour guide for six years, taking the job to give himself a challenge and improve his English.

“I want to practice,” he said. “Practice makes perfect.”

But that isn’t why the Jackets staff chuckles about Yu over meals or tells Pastner he should be the emcee at a team banquet. It’s more the way he has turned the bus into his personal karaoke studio.

Said Yu, whose English is not fluent but is capable, “I’m not a shy boy.” Yu has livened the bus rides by belting out the likes of Rihanna, Akon and Eminem. He plays the songs on his phone and then holds up the mic to the audio while he sings along, following the lyrics scrolling on the screen. Yu joined the team Tuesday, meeting the Jackets in Shanghai after their train ride from Hangzhou. Players and coaches were strained after guards Jose Alvarado, Jon Brown and Justin Moore had been detained by police in connection with the shoplifting incident that led to the arrest of three UCLA players. After arriving late Saturday, they were still adjusting to the 13-hour time difference. Yu injected himself into that weariness, volunteering a song and firing off “Umbrella.” It wasn’t only that he was singing an American hip-hop song in imperfect English. It was that he was fully investing himself, losing himself in the echoey hook — “ella, ella/eh, eh, eh.” And that he opened up his umbrella and, holding it over his head, paraded through the aisle. (The hook, inciden- tally, was written by Atlantan Terius “The-Dream” Nash.) The sheer improbability of the scene won the bus. “We were tired,” Taylor said. “I think we all needed it and hopefully it’ll kind of move forward as we move along.”

Members of the traveling party have become quite intrigued by Yu and his quirks.

Tech’s two tour guides in China — in Hangzhou, it was a man who went by Tony and delivered groan-worthy jokes and a stream-of-conscious monologue — have outdone UCLA’s. The Bruins’ first tour guide in Shanghai was so quiet he had to be swapped out.

“We love Snow and Tony,” Pastner said.

For players, coaches and staff, nearly all of whom have never been to China, Yu has come to represent the expe- rience as much as any of the expeditions. On the bus ride to practice Thursday morning, Yu was conspicuously quiet, spending the trip to Baoshan Arena looking at his phone. Upon arrival, assistant coach Eric Reveno suggested a “Free Snow” chant.

After the team boarded after the workout, Pastner, who sits next to Yu’s spot at the front of the bus, told him, “You can go back on the mic now, Snow.”

When the Jackets took a nighttime cruise on the Huangpu River, Pastner and Yu shared a private conversation, the reigning ACC coach of the year and a man who contin- ued his study of English after 15 years of school by watching the sitcom “Friends,” dictionary in hand.

“He’s sort of a taste of Shanghai for us,” Taylor said.