Football is a universal language and a labor of love

After nearly eight months living in the Chinese capital, I finally made it to my first Beijing Guoan match — and the team didn't disappoint by running out 6-0, winning over the hapless Qingdao Hainiu outfit.

The Beijing Workers' Stadium in Sanlitun — and home of Guoan — is an arena of which the city should rightly be proud. Accommodating 68,000 supporters, the ground is a mix of modern, inventive sporting architecture, such as its concrete facade, columns and oval shape, that has been fused with more traditional and historical elements that celebrate Beijing's past.

The old Workers' Stadium, which was known as Gongti for short, stood on the same site from 1959, the 10th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, until it was demolished in 2020 to make way for the current stadium, which opened at the end of 2022.