02.04.2017 3rd week of Chinese Super League Beijing Guoan - Shanghai Shenhua Beijing Workers' Stadium Result: 2:1 (1:1) Attendance: 53,056 (about 1,500 away fans)
Towards the end of our Asia trip, we decided to stopover in Beijing for three days. Luckily, the Chinese Super League had also just started and Beijing Guoan would be playing at home during the weekend.
When we knew Guoan would play against one of their biggest rivals Shanghai Shenhua, we started to get worried about getting tickets. We understood that more than 20k tickets were allocated to season ticket holders, and the rest of other 20k would go on sale online. But we didn’t have Alipay or whatever chinese payment account, so another option would be buying ticket at door on game day from random people outside the stadium.
Fortunately we still had the last option – asking someone to get tickets for us. Somehow we knew someone that knew someone who could get us free tickets. Well, it’s China afterall, it’s much about networking!
We picked up our tickets without any problems and managed to arrive at the Gongti South Road 30 minutes before kick off. There were already a lot of people in Guoan’s green around the Gongti (abbreviation of Workers’ Stadium in Chinese). We bought a Guoan fan scarf as souvenir for ourselves for only RMB30 and then headed to the entrance.
It didn’t take long for us to get through the ticket and security check. Our seats were on the first row of Gate 17 upper stand. When we arrived at the upper stand, we found that our seats were already taken. So we showed the tickets to the guys and asked them to move away (kindly). They stared at us and said “seats are first come first serve” and looked away. So we asked steward for help but he was like “it’s like that here” and walked away.
We didn’t want to argue at that time so we just went somewhere else and got ourselves seated. Lesson learned again – there are no rules in China. (Later when we left the stadium after game we saw a poster at the gate that said “Please sit according to your assigned seat” that was printed by the Beijing Capital Civilised Spirits Committee Office. Much civilised. Wow. Had we saw this poster before the game, we would have toren it down and threw it at those people face in a civilised way.)
After being forced not to be civilised and had to sit somewhere else, we finally got to check out the stands and the fans. There were three supporters’ group for Guoan in the stadium. The biggest one was on the main stand opposite to us. They had the majority in the lower stand and a small part of upper stand. A banner that showed “Beijing Supporters’ Association Green Hurricane Civilised Cheerleading” was hung in front of the stand. Civilised.
The Green Hurricane prepared a small choreo before the game who said “Make it eighth win in a row at Gongti”, while other fans turned on the flashlight of the phone and created a nice view of the stand.
There was another fan group at the north end behind the goal on our left side. They were all in black and they had some big flags and banners. The fan group was the famous Royal Army (Yulinjun), who separated from the official fan group Green Hurricane in 2005 and “took over” the north end since 2007. The Royal Army was one of the first ultra groups in China.
On our left side at the upper stand, there was also a small group called “Shining Gongti”. We couldn’t find much information about this group, but we found their official Weibo account, which they claimed to be the “first fan group that resist black market tickets with practical action at Gongti”.
It sounds nice to have three groups chanting for a team, but in reality it wasn’t nice at all. These three groups chanted at the same time but with different songs and beats; At the end we couldn’t hear what they were chanting unfortunately because all noise was mixed.
We were also not sure if they were just not loud enough or if the stadium was too big: there were some moments when there was only one group chanting, but we still couldn’t hear them clearly. Also, a lot of other fans have thorns in their hands who kept making those annoying Vuvuzela sound! We had to say Kashiwa fans were few times louder even with less people and without a rooftop.
Meanwhile, the away fans were located at the South end on our right. We watched some videos on YouTube about the rivalry between Guoan and Shenhua, so we expected something from the Shanghainese. However, there were only like two banners hung on the fences and they didn’t have flags. We supposed they were banned to bring big flags to the game? All Shenhua fans were in blue and looked impressive, but there weren’t many people chanting, and not even clapping.
On the field, both teams have some foreign players including former Leverkusen player Renato Augusto and Premier League star Carlos Tevez. We didn’t pay much attention to any individual player though. Shenhua were simply not good enough in this game. Guoan scored the opener of the game, while Shanghai only managed to score the equalised after the Greens made a mistake at their back.
The fans had quite a loud voice and could yell throughout the game. With both teams having more physical collision in the second half, the fans also became more abusive. The famous “Shenhua Shabi” (Stupid cunt, Shenhua) could be heard all the time. Right before the game ended, Beijing scored the winner and as the fans wished: Guoan beat Shenhua the eighth time in a row at home.
After the game, the stadium started annoucing “The game is already over, please pack your trash and bring them with you. Be a civilised fan” and so on. 😀 So we left in a civilised way.
Also a little background of the Workers’ Stadium. The stadium was built in 1959 as a gift from Beijing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the PRC. Several sports events were held at the stadium after it was built including National Games of China and Asian Games. During the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, it was use as the venue for struggle session (public humiliation and torture) and several “anti-revolutionist” were shot dead at the stadium.
The stadium used to be in the middle of houses and farmlands. After China was opened up, the city started to develop and Gongti is now surrounded by restaurants and bars.