World Cup started yesterday, China's sleepless night also started. Chinese usually passively accept foreign cultural elements such as western clothing, NBA, Hollywood movies and even English. The Chinese took a quite some time to get familiar with them. But soccer, particularly the World Cup, is different. Even a Chinese newspaper criticized that America doesn't care about soccer enough because it cares too much about football.
China has the most soccer fans in the world and those Chinese are willing to watch even other countries' matches. If there is a match in the World Cup, Chinese fans will wake up in the middle of night to enjoy the match. It's not that common, because the World Cup is like a stage for each country to show off. China knows that, but it still can't stop itself watching the matches. China loves soccer.
In addition, when Chinese watch the the World Cup games they recognize that there is something that even China can't do. The situation makes Chinese feel their country is the best and can do anything it wants. However this time around in the 2010 World Cup on the one hand they enjoy the games, on the other hand they learn about modesty.