After Nanjing Was Eliminated in the 2025 Jiangsu City League Semifinal - Why Was It More Popular Than the Chinese Super League?
At the end of May this year, I happened to see a video by a Bilibili creator called Lao Maoyu Bu Chi Yu, and that was the first time I paid attention to the Jiangsu City Football League. At the time I was puzzled: what on earth is this "Su Chao"? The Scottish Premiership? Who would have thought that this league would accompany the whole summer of 2025? After Nanjing lost on penalties last night at the Olympic Sports Center, I suddenly felt like writing something to mark the very first Jiangsu City Football League in history.
1. First Impressions of the Thirteen Great Jiangsu Cities
Around 2010, while I was working at the Post and Telecommunications Design Institute, I must have traveled to all thirteen prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu. The reason is not hard to understand: the institute mainly served telecom and mobile-communications projects, so traveling across the province and even to county towns was part of the job. Later, when telecom operators expanded into ICT system integration, we partnered with them as system integrators and traveled even more frequently. But that is another story.
To be honest, in those years I never felt the so-called "fragmented Jiangsu" label very strongly, but the differences between the cities were indeed obvious. The first was dialect. I could understand almost none of them. The second was transportation. Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou were reachable by high-speed rail and often allowed same-day returns, while most trips to northern Jiangsu meant taking a long-distance bus and usually staying overnight. I still remember my first trip to Dafeng Telecom: the company sent a car, and the journey still took six or seven hours. It was exhausting. Of course it was not all bad. We often got off the highway midway, in places like Hongze or Zhuba, to eat a simple meal, and the fish there left a deep impression on me. Accommodation also varied. In central and northern Jiangsu, a little over one hundred yuan could get you a decent hotel in the city center, while in southern Jiangsu you were more likely to choose budget chains. Another thing worth mentioning is that the drinking culture of northern Jiangsu was clearly stronger than that of the south. "If a guest comes, you must treat them well." I later felt similar cultural warmth only in places like Shandong and Xi'an. This is not a judgment about drinking culture itself, but it undeniably brings people closer.
2. The Foundation of Su Chao's Success
Those were passionate years, and now nearly fifteen years have gone by. Today many of those cities have high-speed rail and metro systems, which really makes you admire the country's ability to build. This kind of urban hardware also quietly raises the cultural and civic confidence of local residents. That matters too.
To me, it is precisely this mix of local culture and regional differences, combined with strong economic foundations and decent civic confidence, that made the success of Su Chao possible.
Operations also mattered. Many people say that the internet personality Daodao Fu, as a kind of Jiangsu strategist and chief instigator, played a big role in making the idea of "fragmented Jiangsu" go viral. Fair enough. I have watched quite a few of his short videos myself. He is genuinely talented, and many of his clips are very funny. He says his team is only two people, himself and "Bearded Guy," and that they are even preparing a film version of the Su Village saga. I also think local tourism-and-culture departments operated very well. Accounts like Changzhou Culture and Tourism or Wuxi Culture and Tourism did a strong job. On the one hand, local governments probably do have policy room that encourages publicity to be less stiff and more relaxed. On the other hand, as more young people born after 2000 enter the civil-service system, their perspectives and ideas are bound to change traditional methods of promotion.
3. Why Did I Care?
Back to last night's match. As someone from southern Anhui who has watched football since 1994 and has lived in Nanjing for more than twenty years, I was surprised to find that I actually felt upset when Nanjing lost. It had been a very, very long time since a single football match had made me feel that way. If I close my eyes and try to think of the last time, I might have to go back all the way to the Guangzhou Evergrande era.
I keep wondering: in terms of level, this team is clearly below the fully professional sides, and probably not even as strong as the better teams in the Chinese Champions League. Yet even in China League One, where the standard is higher, Nanjing's matches usually do not attract many spectators. The players are still basically those same players, so why did this tournament become such a sensation?
Then I thought of the basketball tournaments in my hometown. Since the last century, Jingde County has held basketball competitions during the National Day holiday. Different towns and government units organize teams and play in the county's only outdoor basketball court in the middle of town. The conditions are rough, with not even proper stands. Spectators just stand around or sit on nearby stone steps, but none of that stops the atmosphere from being lively.
Is the standard low? Of course it is. Do most spectators really understand the game? Probably not. Many of them likely do not even know the three-second rule. Will they come one year and never return the next? As far as I know, the tournament has continued for many years except during the pandemic. So what is it that keeps those matches alive?
In the end, I found myself remembering a comment left by a Bilibili user the year before last.