The Strange Afterlife of an American Football Story from China
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2014, the writer Christopher Beam published a humorous, heartwarming story in The New Republic about an unlikely team of American football enthusiasts in Chongqing who went on to defeat their archrivals in Shanghai to win a championship. The piece was optioned by Sony Pictures, and had some big names attached, but was ultimately never made — not, at least, by an American studio. Eleven years later, Chris has written about a film that was made: Clash, produced by iQiyi, hit theaters in China earlier this year and followed the Chongqing Dockers in the same story arc, but with important and telling differences. His new story was published in The Atlantic, and he talks to me about the Dockers and the long, strange story of the film that wasn't and the one that was.
03:50 – The Meaning of Chinese YOLO
05:33 – Chris’s First Meeting With the Chongqing Team
13:11 – Chris McLaurin’s Background
15:54 – American Football as a Symbol of Masculinity
19:50 – The Failed Hollywood Adaptation
25:34 – First Impressions of the Film
31:55 – Bridging Perspectives: Can a Movie Speak To Both Sides?
36:42 – A Lost Moment in Globalization
Paying it Forward: Viola Zhou
Recommendations:
Chris: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte (short story collection)
Kaiser: Becoming Led Zeppelin (documentary); the Beijing-based artist Michael Cherney.
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Transcript
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| 0:45.7 | That's audible.com slash Wondery UK. Welcome to the Cynica podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China. |
| 1:02.7 | In this program, we'll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, |
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| 1:23.1 | this week from Beijing. It is great to be back again. I am at the home of Michael Cherney, |
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