On November 17, 2022, a soccer feast unfolded between Jingchuan Wenhui and Beijing Guoan, with the county-level team shocking the entire soccer world with a 7-5 blowout victory over the Chinese Super League giants. After the match, the players of Beihai Jichi gathered together, with Yao Jun, the club's founder, standing third from the right in the last row of the group photo. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
Behind this victory lies an unknown secret. Jingchuan Wenhui, a mysterious team from the eastern part of Gansu province, whose players do not come from the legendary take-out workers, physical education teachers or insurance salesmen, but from the Beihai Jichi Football Club. With the help of Jingchuan Wenhui's shell, Beihai Jizhi has made a comeback, and it's all been done in silence. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
Beihai Jichi, also an obscure club, has struggled on the edge of life and death for years.In the winter of 2019, Yao Jun took a youth training team of about 30 players to winter training in Beihai, Guangxi, but was stranded due to an epidemic. In order to make ends meet, Yao Jun ran around and borrowed money to make ends meet. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
In 2021, Beihai Jizhi suffered a loss in Guangxi and missed the championship. In order to survive, Yao Jun decided to look for a new way out. He targeted Gansu, a province that had never sent a team to a national tournament. After much maneuvering, he found Jingchuan Wenhui and successfully borrowed a shell to compete in the tournament. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
Chinese soccer clubs are categorized into four tiers: Chinese Super League, Chinese First Division, Chinese Second Division and Chinese Championship. Beihai Jizhi became the hero behind Jingchuan Wenhui, while Jingchuan Wenhui became synonymous with this victory. Under Yao Jun's leadership, this team completed its metamorphosis from obscurity to shocking the nation in just a few months. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
On November 20, after the game in Rizhao, Shandong Province, Yao Jun took the team to rest in Jinan, thinking about the next destination. In the past six months, the team has been following him around and has lived in no less than 20 places. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
Yao Jun, the 52-year-old soccer man, resembles Zhang Fei from the Three Kingdoms, with his angry hair and jianghu spirit. He wants to build one of the best clubs in China, and those words always come out of his mouth without notice. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
Before the match against Beijing Guoan, Yao Jun arranged the tactics in the lounge. He told Southern Weekend that this win over Beijing Guoan was the most like a team since its inception. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
Lv Binwu, chairman of Jingchuan Wenhui Club, invested in the team. He told Southern Weekend that the team's first name was "744300 Club", which is the Jingchuan postal code sponsored by a local clothing company, and was later renamed "Precious Football Club". He also has the name Wenhui, he opened a Wenhui bookstore, set up the Wenhui training school. 2021, after the double reduction can not be tutored, "transformed into a club, to take the road of sports". (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
It was Beihai Jichi who really beat Beijing Guoan, and the amateurs of Jingchuan Wenhui were just spectators of the game. These were two completely separate teams. Lv Binwu, chairman of Jingchuan Wenhui, knows little about the players. He told a reporter from Southern Weekend that he had "almost no contact" with them. When asked which player's performance was the most impressive, he said for a dozen seconds, "They're all pretty good." (Courtesy of interviewee/photo)
The entire celebratory party maintains a subtle sense of detachment, the players rarely cross each other, but the whole scene stays warm. This sense of detachment is taboo in soccer. One player sighed, "This win over Beijing Guoan was the most like a team since its inception." (Courtesy of Interviewee/Photo)
On November 30th, after spending a week in Hezhou, Guangxi, they returned to Beihai to prepare for the next round against Jinan Xingzhou. The opponent was a team that had not lost and was much stronger than them. (Courtesy of the interviewee/photo)
