On my way to pick up a parcel, I ran into a friend. He had already waved from his car, and I thought that would be the end of it. Then he pulled over and asked whether I had seen the match at the nearby stadium the night before last.
I said no. What teams?
Indonesia and China's national team.
What was the score?
2:1, we won. He swiped open his phone and showed me clips and photos. In one he was wearing a team jersey. I don't follow football enough to recognize many kits, but it looked like China's, with vertical stripes.
I asked how much the ticket cost. Had he made a killing?
He said he got in free by climbing over the wall.
I said, impressive. What equipment did you use? I remembered that stadium wall being pretty high.
Not high, he said. Less than two meters. It was the outer wall. He didn't watch the whole match; he just went in to join the crowd. Then he showed me a video of everyone singing a song about the motherland prospering. The atmosphere looked great.
That fits this friend. He once flew to Shanghai for a concert. When there are concerts nearby, he buys tickets eagerly and has invited me several times. I really don't want to go, mainly because I get carsick. He drives like a fire is chasing him—hard braking, hard stops, fast starts. On a previous beachcombing trip, we drove dozens of kilometers round trip and I threw up twice. I'll save the beachcombing story for another time.
He went on. He had gone in and out twice. The first time he got in, he realized the friend he came with hadn't made it. But he saw other people rushing in. The match started around eight, and he entered near the end. Around nine he sent some photos and videos to his friend. Later some new arrivals chatted with him and said they had rushed in too. A lot of people charged together; those caught by police or security weren't punished, just thrown out, and then they waited for another chance.
He went back out to find his friend and waited. When the ticket checkers had withdrawn and the match was nearly over, only a few security guards were left. The police had relaxed too. They shouted that China had won and rushed toward the entrance. Sure enough, no one stopped them, and they got in again.
On that second entry, he bought a jersey—short sleeves only. After the crowd started leaving, the price dropped from 50 yuan to 30. The color was close enough. I remembered the photo showing vertical stripes; later I looked up pictures from the match and the jerseys were different. Indonesia was in white.
He also mentioned the Refund Bro and a few other internet-famous fans. I don't know much about them; I rarely watch short videos. We talked for a while about Indonesian fans cursing, then about tactics. He showed me footage of the players thanking the crowd after the match and pointed out the ones he knew, one by one.
By the end, he had almost convinced me to climb the wall and take a look. I do like climbing over walls—I have since I was a kid.
I asked when there would be another match here. He said he wasn't sure. What he was sure of was that this stadium was a lucky ground for the national team.
I laughed.
Ask Shandong
That evening my wife showed me a short clip from Ask Yantai. A female host was questioning the mayor of Yantai about a neglected corner that had been rectified for years with little effect. I worried for her. Then I looked it up: she was at inspector level, half a rank above the mayor.
I searched for other highlights from Ask Shandong. They looked good. Officials at every level were fine actors. The host would tell them not to try the usual tricks, and then they would all play the emotional card together—bowing when a bow was needed, apologizing when an apology was needed.
In Tai'an, land resources were being mined illegally. There was already an entire industry chain, with trucks lined up like dragons day and night. Urban management and the state-owned assets commission kicked the problem back and forth. During the livestream, the mayor ordered the county head to start dealing with it.
Live-streaming government affairs and dialogue, installing a few more cameras at the trouble spots, letting the public supervise—if good handling earned good reviews and those reviews counted toward performance evaluations, efficiency would probably improve.
Also, satellites are precise enough to monitor farmland quite well. Why was there no alarm for something like this?
But I'm not in office, so I shouldn't be making policy. An ordinary person earning cabbage money, worrying about Zhongnanhai.
I was overthinking it.