An Australian group of fans is arriving in South Africa at the airport, shortly after, a Chinese group is following. They meet at the baggage carousel, the Chinese television is there, the Chinese ask the Australians, “Where are you from, what are you doing here?” The Australians truthfully reply that they wanted to support their national team, and now the Australians ask back, “And where are you folks from?” – “From China.” – “But China is not taking part at all!” – “Of course, we know that, too, but we just want to watch some football!”
A Chinese businessman needs to travel to Japan; in the evening he wants to watch the World Cup in a pub, the TV is on, but it is a soap opera! The pub visitors are only interested in the background noise, not in the World Cup, even though Japan had not yet been eliminated at that time.
When England is eliminated, it takes only two days and the World Cup has disappeared from the headlines there, at once, Tiger Woods with his marital problems and the resulting financial problems is more interesting.
In the days before the semi-finals and the finals, as there are no games, CCTV 5 repeats even preliminary games in full-length; in-between there are analyses, discussions and the constantly updated gallery of the most beautiful goals and the best goalkeeper saves of the tournament. Likewise historical programmes are broadcast, old finals between Germany and the Netherlands, Germany and Brazil, and the Wembley goal. In fairness I must mention that during these days also other sports receive coverage again, such as the Tour de France and volleyball.
On the internet, dozens of websites compile all information on all the teams, how many people are members of the supporting team (in Germany, there’s a ratio playersto-carers of 1:2), the wives and girlfriends of players are presented and photographed (Xiao Zhu’s – the reader recalls, perhaps, that is is the Chinese name of Schweinsteiger
– girlfriend is chosen as the nicest among German players’ wives), all children of all players can be found on websites, people discuss whether today’s L.w or former Klinsmann are more handsome; photos of key players are enlarged, showing the eye area, so that they can be compared and analysed: “Messi has a glance that’s full of sadness, Kaka has a bright and open look.”
And of course the fans are getting informed that most products used in South Africa during the World Cup were produced in China, including 60 million condoms in World Cup proper packaging, all of which go to South Africa, all the stadium seats, of course, almost all mobile phones that are required by the organisers, coaches, players and fans, 12 million official balls that are for a smaller part used in the games, for a much larger part sold to active fans all over the world.
Not to mention the vuvuzelas, those long horns with the piercing sound that give the TV-viewers at home the impression that several large clouds of hornets are buzzing around the microphones. They are produced in a handful of small, inconspicuous back-house plastic factories in ZheJiang and GuangDong.
One of the factories (evidently the vuvuzela manufacturing pioneer in China) reported that first, they received a few months ago an order for ten thousand items. Then the whole thing grew, however, and they received an order for three million units. They could not accept it because they were not prepared for such an extreme mass production (apart from semi-automatic injection moulding, the horns are assembled manually by workers who earn two or three thousand RMB a month), and so they took but a partial order for one million units. The remaining order portions went to a few other factories that had to adapt in an incredibly short time to this boom of orders, and they made it. Neighbouring factories produced accordingly the requested amounts of ear plugs.
The manufacturer sells the horns, probably to a first of the many intermediaries, for four RMB; as soon as the big order came, the price was “gruesomely” increased to five RMB per item, equal to about 0.60 ?, after all, they wanted to have a share in the boom. In South Africa they were finally sold for more than ten times that much. I don’t want to know what they cost in Germany. After all, this little company, that in normal years earned 18 million RMB, increased its sales in 2010 to 28 million (or about three million Euros), of which remains according to their own claims only 5% profit. The lion’s share of the profits is thus stuck again at the intermediate trade....
Only the referee whistles are not produced in China, but in Germany. They have to meet tough specifications, for their sound has to drown the vuvuzelas from China. Only German whistles can manage that, so the Chinese admit without envy. “We do the vuvuzelas, you do the whistles, that’s fair, isn’t it?”
So the Chinese say of themselves that ultimately the World Cup relies on China, not only because they achieve the largest group of television viewers, but also because they provide by far the largest number of products you need for the World Cup. So China was actually the 33rd team in the tournament.