The Canton shuffle: football in Guangzhou, China

As an Englishman in Asia   Duncan Grimes   never traveled far without having a conversation about English football. He, on the other hand, was more interested in how the local Chinese have taken to the Great Game.

Throughout my youth I regularly went to watch lower division English football matches and I’d always wondered if a similar tradition existed in the Far East. I was keen to see if the Chinese had similar loyal connections with their local teams, a tradition that still exists in England, if only just.

In essence I wanted to re-assure myself that the game I love so much did not only just bring people together through Coca-Cola adverts and pompous international tournaments, but also survived as a gritty, live experience in a foreign land not often associated with the game. While visiting a Chinese friend in his hometown of Guangzhou, I took the opportunity to find out.

With a mindset that football is a form of global language, and bereft of any information otherwise, I trusted and assured Wang that the game would start in time honored fashion at 3.00pm.

After unsuccessfully scoping out the main stadium in Guangzhou we struck it lucky at a second arena, discovering that kick off was set for 3.30 pm. This was the first in a series of minor differences reminding me that we were watching Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Football Club, playing in the Chinese Football Association Super League in the middle of what was once Canton, and not watching Charlton Athletic from the blustery covered end.

As the game neared kick off, more global football cultural reference points put me at ease: the spine-tingling, trumpeting assembly that is FIFA’s ‘anthem’. This adopted rousing classical anthem has become the curtain-raiser to football’s greatest occasions including the World Cup, the Champion’s League and now Guangzhou Pharmaceutical’s encounter with Beijing.

Further evidence that FIFA’s ‘how to stage a football match’ handbook was being carefully followed was the slow amble of players to the centre circle, accompanied by lucky young urchins clasping their heroes’ hands. Then a FIFA flag was held outstretched by more fresh faced juveniles for all to see. This was not merely a meeting of two teams but a spectacle that conformed to all the stock narrative conventions of exported European and international football.

As the game got underway we took our seats on concrete graded steps among the home fans. I had no other choice, mind you, as Beijing supporters were conspicuous by their absence, a 24 hour train journey the demand on keen supporters following their team away. A tad more of an undertaking than a trip up the M1, for sure. Inevitably this affected the atmosphere within the stadium. It was less a constant stream of banter songs and more a constant medley of boisterous anthems.

To be honest, it was sub-standard football; but then many an English supporter devotes himself to a club playing not much more. Nevertheless, all goals scored were greeted with the same fervor as a thirty-yard pile driver in the final minute of the FA cup final.

The crowd was populated by a sea of replica Guangzhou pharmaceutical shirts, punctuated by the odd fake Manchester United or Barcelona shirt. It was also the blue of Guangzhou that dominated on the pitch as they strolled to the three nil victory over a hapless Beijing. The standard was not befitting the electric atmosphere - more Mansfield Town than Manchester United - but that didn’t seem to dampen the mood.

There were clearly some journeyman European players who realised a opportunity to play football at this level. Indeed, Guangzhou seemed to adopt a tactic I have become familiar with at Charlton - the obligatory monstrous man - clearly a ring-in from the West - up front bulldozing any defenders in his way and occasionally connecting with the ball.

Despite the obvious European influence seen in the ubiquity of FIFA branding, there was clearly a community of supporters who revel in the experience of live football and a fanatical support of their local team. It was not something I had witnessed in local football in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Sure I'd encountered a football fan on every day of my seven-month journey through Asia, but here I encountered a community of fans that experienced live football from the terraces and not just through the glorious Technicolor of television.

As China opens up to the West, so too are the Chinese embracing the beautiful game, its commercialised celebrity culture and all. The country's Super League less historical and more artificial than the English league in its conception but it's increasingly more pure and organic in its regular clientele. Communities are growing up with a local team and a realisation that football is more than just a brand, something that is no longer the case in many English towns.

After the game I was desperate for an authentic souvenir. Reflecting the time-honoured tradition of swapping shirts post match, I purchased a Guangzhou Pharmaceuticals shirt, figuring that it would help promote the league in South London in the same way that Manchester United shirts promote the premier league in Southern Canton.