NBA superstar and China's world ambassador of basketball Yao Ming pledged he would take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge on August 23. The announcement was posted today on his Shanghai school's website.

The Ice Bucket Challenge is a viral Internet awareness and fundraising campaign for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS. A more common name for the condition is Lou Gehrig's Disease. Challenged by his friends, Yao agreed to the now familiar sight of celebrities pouring cold water over themselves and recording the event for viewers on the Internet and social media, shudders, yelps, and all.

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The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in the body, ALS leads first to impaired movement before the onset of total paralysis and death. While named for baseball legend Lou Gehrig, who succumbed to the disease in 1941, physicist Stephen Hawking is perhaps the best-known sufferer today.

Yao joins several other notables in the campaign. "Thor" actor Tom Hiddleston, singers Lady Gaga and Britney Spears, supermodel phenom Cindy Crawford, Bill Gates, Robert Downey Jr, Oprah Winfrey, and Pennsylvania lawmaker Brian Sims have all been doused for the cause.

As of August 19th, the worldwide craze has raised over $22.9 million for ALS research.

As the campaign continues, a game of oneupmanship seems to be taking hold. While some participants such as Sims opt for a simple self-inflicted bucket over the head, it is clear others are getting far more complex. Gwen Steffani and Rita Ora orchestrated whole scenes where their friends dumped icy water over them Super Bowl-style. Gates rigged up a complex bucket-dumping machine, while actor Mickey Rourke got soaked in front of millions of TV viewers on "Late Night with Seth Meyers." Speedo-clad NHL star Paul Bissonnette had water dumped on him from an overhead helicopter in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. 

It is not known how complex Yao Ming will get, but as the 31st tallest person in the world, he may want to opt for the helicopter.

TagsYao Ming, als, lou gehrig's disease, ALS Ice Bucket Challenge