China’s New Public Passion

In an earlier time in China’s tumultuous history, one could imagine Zheng Zhang as a Communist revolutionary or a militant Red Guard.

Sitting tensely on the edge of his chair in a crowded restaurant in the Chinese capital, the 26-year-old exuded absolute devotion to his cause. He spoke of the struggle against injustice. Pointing to a small crescent scar on his temple, he detailed his willingness to fight and sacrifice for his side.

“They came at me with bricks and small knives,” Zheng said of an encounter with the opposition last year in Jinan, a provincial capital in eastern China. “They pelted me with mantou [loaves of steamed bread]. The police just watched.”

No veteran of the 1927 Shanghai Incident or the 1934-35 Long March--two milestones of Communist Party history--could have been prouder of his participation in a historic battle. But what Zheng was describing took place in the grandstand during a professional soccer match between the Beijing Guoan Soccer Club and the Jinan Taishan team.

Zheng, who told his story at the Soccer Fan Socialist Dining Hall, is one of a new breed of rabid sports fans who has surfaced in China in the past several years. As China rushes headlong into a more capitalistic economy, Maoist ideology and political zeal have been benched. Replacing them are new passions for movies, music and, most recently, professional sports--especially soccer and basketball.

Competing for Chinese consumers’ new-found disposable income is a range of entertainment enterprises that includes theme parks, bowling alleys, karaoke bars, warehouse-size discos, paint-ball battlegrounds and therapeutic milk baths.

In movies and music, most of the fan frenzy focuses on Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop idols such as martial arts master Jackie Chan, actor-crooner Andy Lau and recently deceased folk singer Teresa Teng.

Under an agreement with U.S. film distributors, moviegoers can see recent films such as “Outbreak,” “A Walk in the Clouds” and “The Bridges of Madison County.”

None of the new diversions comes cheap. Concert tickets cost $3 to $10 each. For “The Bridges of Madison County”--lyrically translated into Chinese as “Covered Bridges Remembered in Dreams”--general admission runs up to $4. Couples who want a more romantic vantage from which to watch Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep entwine on the big screen can pay $10 for one of the upholstered love seats featured in the newer cinema halls. These prices are a quantum leap from the 30 mao (3-cent) ticket prices that prevailed a decade ago.

Most recently, China’s entertainment iconography increasingly has been studded with foreign professional athletes. National Basketball Assn. players from the United States enjoy a vast following. So do Italian League soccer stars. The nationally televised NBA Game of the Week--complete with voice-over narration in Mandarin--is one of China’s most-watched programs.

The latest stage in the development of China’s fan culture is public idolization of home-grown stars from the new professional soccer and basketball leagues. This is remarkable in that professional sports are a very recent, still tentative development in China, where any kind of mass allegiance--separate from nationalism--is viewed warily by the central regime.

A recent story in China Women’s Weekly compared the devoted following of Beijing Guoan soccer star Cao Xiandong to that of Hong Kong pop star Lau. “Cao Xiandong Eliminates Liu Dehua,” the headline announced, using the Mandarin rendering of Lau’s name. It was followed by the subtitle: “Music Fans become Soccer Fans.”

Before Chinese sports were permitted to become professional four years ago, admission to most games was free. But tickets to the top-level professional soccer league rose this year to $3. Some fans at a recent exhibition between the Beijing Guoan team and a Brazilian squad paid up to $18 for a sideline seat.

In 1992, the government cautiously allowed the formation of professional soccer and basketball leagues across the country. The caution was due to China’s sometimes bitter experiences with mass movements, even those born out of seemingly innocuous events.

The potential volatility of sports events was evident in 1985 when Beijing fans rioted after the Chinese national team lost to the team from Hong Kong during the early elimination rounds of the 1986 World Cup. The episode, in which cars were set ablaze and several police officers were injured, became known as the “May 19 Soccer Incident.”

The student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 made the government even more leery of mass gatherings, perhaps believing that all had the potential to become political movements.

After Tiananmen, the government discouraged attendance at amateur soccer matches between work units and prevented the formation of fan clubs. The concern continues as party officials today complain about the practice of fan clubs shouting obscenities in regional dialect at opposing sides. The choruses of curses, often involving creative variations on themes involving bovine private parts, sometimes can be heard in the background of nationally televised matches.

Party officials and newspaper editorialists express fear that the practice will accentuate the growing regionalism--particularly between the Cantonese-speaking far south and the Mandarin-speaking north--that already divides China.

Despite such dangers, under prodding from National Sports Committee chairman Wu Shaozu, the Communist government decided that after more than a decade of market reforms the population was mature enough for tentative commercialization of sports.

Professional soccer leagues were formed using the models and class gradations in Europe. Most of the teams are owned by state-controlled businesses or government units. One thing still missing in Chinese professional sports is the individual mogul, such as Dodger owner Peter O’Malley or Laker owner Jerry Buss.

For the first time, players were paid according to their skills and turnstile value--as much as $37,000 a year in some cases, more than 30 times the average per capita income. Sponsors, mainly cigarette and beer companies, were permitted to attach their logos to uniforms and stadium billboards. And in the most revolutionary change of all, fan clubs were permitted to organize around local teams.

Soccer stars emerged and giggling teenage students began to gather outside stadium gates seeking autographs and glimpses of their heroes.

At a recent preseason match in Shanghai, Li Jing, a 17-year-old high school student, explained her devotion to Shanghai star player Qi Hong. “Almost all the girls in my class like Qi Hong,” said a beaming Li. “He is so handsome and he plays well.”

According to the manager of Beijing’s new Fan World Soccer Shop, knowledge of the game is not that important. “The best soccer fans are teenagers,” said Li Jindong, 28, an economics graduate of People’s University. “They may not even understand how a game is played. They just like the atmosphere, and the girls like to write letters to the players.”

The shop, located near the eastern gate of the Forbidden City, has track lighting and shelves filled with soccer paraphernalia mostly associated with the Beijing Guoan team. It sells plastic player trading cards and a CD-ROM featuring video clips of outstanding plays. One segment shows one star athlete dressed in a tuxedo and singing a karaoke pop song.

On a recent afternoon, the shop was doing a brisk business in team jerseys signed by some of the star players. For a price, a customer can have his or her name printed on a Beijing Guoan jersey.

The shop is one of five soccer fan stores that have opened in Beijing in the past year. Similar shops and soccer theme restaurants have opened in other major cities.

In Shanghai, the most famous is the Oriental TV Soccer Fan Club, where fans gather to discuss the most recent game or debate burning issues such as “Is it positive or negative that soccer players now earn more and more money?”

Shanghai also has a popular biweekly newspaper, the Soccer Post. “It’s a bestseller for me,” said Ling Fangfang, owner of a small newspaper stall. “I put them on the stand at 3:30 and they are usually sold out by 5.”

The most serious soccer fans in Beijing gather at the Soccer Fan Socialist Dining Hall, where several were assembled on a recent afternoon to discuss the professional season, which opened this month.

The small restaurant with eight tables and private upstairs rooms for fan club meetings was opened last fall by businessman Li Shao, whose other interests include real estate and futures trading. The restaurant’s walls are adorned with photographs of international soccer stars and a schedule of upcoming matches.

A 41-year-old graduate of People’s University who majored in the history of the Chinese Communist Party, Li said his idea was to combine the growing interest in soccer with the ongoing nostalgia for the early Maoist phase of the People’s Republic.

The name Socialist Dining Hall dates to the 1958 Great Leap Forward launched by Chairman Mao Tse-tung when people ate free in communal dining halls. Hanging from one pillar in the main dining room is a single pink banner proclaiming: “Socialism Is Good.”

Besides his restaurant, which is located near Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, Li organizes package tours for supporters going to away matches. Before 1992, only a handful of carefully selected officials were allowed to travel.

Last year, he said, more than 3,000 fans journeyed to matches in Tianjin, Shanghai, Jinan and Dalian. This year, he is planning his first overseas tour to an exhibition in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

“It’s only been in the past few years that China has had professional soccer fans,” said Li, surveying his crowded restaurant. “Now the stadiums are crowded, and people have started to follow the teams when they travel.”