In June 2016, hundreds of soccer fans flocked to Shanghai Airport to welcome one of the world's best soccer players to his new home.
Hulk, the 29-year-old Brazilian international, in top form, signed for coach Sven-Goran Eriksson and his Shanghai SPGI for more than €53 million and weekly earnings of €370.000.
Upon entering the airport, a bouquet of flowers was thrust into his hands, and a Shanghai SIPG scarf was placed around his neck.
Over the next three years, Hulk was joined at the new club by other big football names for even bigger sums of money.
Oscar, the star of London Chelsea, arrived six months later.
His transfer cost 70 million euros, while his weekly salary was 465.000 euros.
Carlos Tevez, who won the Premier League with Manchester United and Manchester City, signed an even more lucrative contract according to all estimates.
Paris Saint-Germain star Ezekiel Lavezzi, Manchester United target Alex Teschiera and Colombian striker Jackson Martinez have also been lured by astronomical figures.
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The rise of the Chinese Super League coincided with Chinese President Xi Jinping's desire to turn the country into a soccer nation.
In 2011, he announced plans for the national team to qualify for the World Cup, as well as to host one of the next championships.
When the Chinese Super League started spending huge sums of money, his ambition to turn the nation into a football superpower began to take on realistic shapes.
"The Chinese market is a danger for all the world's teams, not just Chelsea," Blues manager Antonio Conte said at the time Oscar went east.
"China has the financial power to move the entire Euroleague to China," said his Arsenal counterpart Arsene Wenger.
However, just a little less than ten years later, this whole process went in the opposite direction, and the bubble in which it existed until then burst, so the players started to leave.
Jack Sealy was not a big name in the world of football when he came to China.
The son of the former Queens Park Rangers striker signed for Chinese Super League side Changchun Yatai in December 2015.
Sili was then 28 years old and played in Hong Kong, and he was attracted to China by the arrival of big names, a higher level of football, as well as the money that came with all that.
"I went to China when the league was still on the rise, so it was very exciting to be there at the time," he told the BBC.
"At that time, people were aware that this was happening, but nobody really knew much about it all. But the time soon came when those who understood football reacted differently: "Oh, you're going to the Superliga".
"I don't regret that period in my career one bit. It was incredible."
Amazing, but also unusual.
"I had to completely forget who they were," he says of some of the biggest names playing for opposing teams.
"Either I progressed, or they regressed, whatever, but I had to look at them as my equals and try to do my best. But anyway, it was surreal."
"Oskar - I watched him play for Chelsea - and of course, knew him from the FIFA game. It was quite miraculous."
By 2019, the league had become so big that even Real Madrid's Gareth Bale, at one point the most expensive footballer in the world, was in talks with Jiangsu Suning over a three-year deal that would see him earn more than €XNUMX million a week.
Just two years later, Jiangsu Suning ceased operations due to a financial situation that was so bad that they even had to sell the club bus.
How did the Chinese football scene manage to collapse so quickly in such a spectacular way?
Everything went downhill when the Football Association of China, which had already established a "luxury tax" that practically made large transfers impossible and forbade sponsors to name the clubs themselves, in December 2020 announced the introduction of the 'salary cap' - the same amount of money that each team has available to buy players.
At the time, the Chinese Football Association said it hoped the move would "curb massive investment in football" and that some of the money would flow into an "investment bubble" for the Chinese national team.
The Chinese sports administration has been aware of how much money the club's Super League spends for some time.
Back in 2017, they firmly decided to curb spending money and control "irrational investments", at the same time accusing clubs of "wasting money" and paying foreign players "excessive salaries".
In any case, the salary cap achieved the desired effects.
The limit meant that foreign players could earn a maximum of €60.000 per week, which was a significantly lower amount compared to the sums that were offered to foreign players before.
For some teams, this measure was necessary due to the accumulated debts caused by the large spending of money on transfers.
A large number of clubs also had a problem due to the increasing problems their owners had in the real estate sector in China, when a certain number of construction giants ran into liquidity problems.
On top of everything, the covid-19 pandemic has arrived.
China's strict policy in the fight against the pandemic has drastically disrupted the competition calendar, and matches have been played in front of empty stands for more than two years.
Earnings from television broadcasts and sponsors have practically stopped.
Samir Memišević, defender of the national team of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has played for FC Hebej since February 2020, but he himself says that his second season at the club was marked by problems that took place behind the scenes.
"That second season - I thought something was really wrong," he told the BBC.
"After a few months, financial problems started. Then there was a big problem with the Chinese players who didn't get paid according to the contract for months.
"I was convinced that at the end of the current season, Hebei will no longer exist."
Memišević received and accepted an offer to go on loan to Beijing Guoan, one of the best clubs in the Chinese Super League.
Hebej, who signed contracts with Laveci and former Premier League standard players Javier Mascherano and Gervinho during the golden period of the Supeliga, decided to throw players from the youth unit into the fire, in a desperate desire to survive.
Some of the club's staff were put on unpaid leave and offered to continue working for free for a club whose owner, a debt-ridden real estate company, was struggling to pay basic bills.
It was all in vain.
At the beginning of this year, Hebej was dissolved.
"I feel sorry for Hebei and everything that happened because it was one of the biggest clubs with a lot of big football names and money," says Memišević, who now plays for Al-Nasr in Dubai.
"And now he simply disappeared."
"It's really sad, but it happens to many Chinese clubs. I saw that Gwangju and Wuhan are also disappearing. That's really sad."
"I hope that Chinese football will recover because they have invested a lot of money in this sport. But I don't think it will ever be the same again."
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For John Hesset, the Chinese Super League will never be the same again without his favorite club Guangzhou City.
The club coached by Eriksson and before him former Arsenal and Glasgow Rangers star Giovanni van Bronkhorst also disbanded in March this year.
Heset looked forward to every time his favorite club played home games, because he loved cheering on the team together with his friends.
"For many people, this social aspect of going to matches is as important as the football itself," he told the BBC.
"There is a small shop in front of the stadium where we always went to have a drink before and after the game.
"That place has also become a haven for local Chinese fan groups after every game. It has become a very popular place."
"We were all desperate. We held a vigil for our club in that pub when it was closed. We met with some other fan groups and drank beer in front of the stadium. We had a great time.
"Part of the problem was that the clubs did not manage to earn enough money to survive.
"The tickets were extremely cheap. The season ticket cost me between 60 and 70 euros.
"Students also bought tickets for smaller amounts. People here generally don't buy official jerseys, they buy them in front of the stadium for 3,5 euros.
"Profit generation is the biggest problem that exists in the Chinese Super League. And when the economy is in crisis, where will the money come from?".
At the end of last year, when the countdown began for the fans until the start of the reopening of the stadium, another question surfaced: where did all that money go?
The corruption scandal has spread to the highest levels in domestic football.
Former Everton midfielder and former China national team manager Li Tie has been investigated for "serious breaches of the law" and bribery allegations.
Chen Zhuyan, former president of the Chinese Football Association, is facing similar charges, while South Korean footballer Son Jun-ho, who played for Shandong Taishan, was detained in May on suspicion of accepting bribes.
At the moment, a small number of foreign players are playing in the league.
Those currently playing in China, both foreign and local players, did not respond to the BBC's calls for interviews.
But regardless of the problems that the Super League of China is currently in, domestic football is still very popular.
When tickets for the first match in front of the visitors went on sale in April this year, they were sold out in less than five minutes.
Alberto Doldan, who has worked in China and throughout Asia as a football agent, says that the current aggressive acquisitions of talented players from the most popular teams in Saudi Arabia are just a reminder of what has been happening in the Chinese Super League.
Still, he insists that the Chinese league still has a future, even if it differs from the vision that once seemed possible.
"Many teams in China have disappeared due to financial problems," he told the BBC.
"But I think it will be better in the future because they are working hard with young players. I think that in the next five, six or seven years, local players will be at a much higher level.
"China is still a good place. I think the future is in the domestic players".
Now that the number of foreign players is smaller and there are no more superstars, the focus is on the production of domestic footballers who will raise the level of play in the league and increase China's chances of making it to the World Cup, a tournament that, at least in the men's competition, they have been to until now. competed only once in history.
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