My grandfather, Yang Xiasun, was born in Meixian in 1926. The village is called the Hometown of Football. He was the third son.
His father, Yang Xiangzi, was a primary school principal. He founded the Lingdong Football Team. The Yang house was a football house before my grandfather was born.
At seven my grandfather went to the school where his father was principal. The school was eighty meters from the village pitch. He spent every recess on the dirt.
When the children of his street started gathering to play, they had no ball. My grandfather gave up the money his father had set aside for his shoes. He brought home a ball instead. He played barefoot in the rice paddies, between bamboo poles set into the dirt for goals. His feet were cut by the rice stubble. He went back the next day.
In 1945, the war ended. He left Meixian at eighteen with a football team. They played their way through Fujian and Zhejiang and never lost. Two years later he led his high school team to the Zhejiang provincial championship.
He went to Shanghai for college. He was one of the first university-trained physical education graduates in New China.
In 1952, on the first day of August, the new country held its first All-Army Sports Games. He won them, playing for the Air Force. He was selected for the Bayi team that year.
In 1954, the Bayi team toured Bulgaria. Seventeen matches in fifty-eight days. He scored nine goals.
He came back. He played for the national side. Teammates of his from those years went on to coach it.
In a match against Myanmar in 1955, the team won 9-1. He played the right wing.
In 1956, a marshal named He Long sent him to Chongqing to build a team there. The southwest had no professional football. He stayed four years and made one.
In a hospital room in Xi'an that same year, he met my grandmother. He had broken his nose against a goalkeeper. She brought him flowers. They married within three months.
In 1959, he was sent further. To Xinjiang. He took the Xinjiang team from a 7-0 loss to first in the Northwest in two seasons.
In 1964 he came home to Meixian to care for his parents. He coached the county team to third place in the national second division in 1966.
Then there was a silence. Four years he could not play. White hair when he came out.
In 1971 he was given a school in Bingcun and the title of physical education teacher. He kept coaching. The county team kept playing because he was there.
In 1979, after twenty-five years apart, he was reunited with my grandmother in Shanghai. They lived their years out in Jing'an. A photograph from those years shows him and my grandmother holding me as a baby in their apartment.
He died in 2002.
I designed JÌNG for him.
My name is Michael Yang. My mother is his elder daughter. After my parents divorced, I took her name. Which was his.
I was born in Shanghai. I knew him as a quiet old man.
I designed and engineered the first JÌNG ball at my desk in Jing'an. A thirty-two panel ball, covered in brushed microfiber, with a single seal on a single panel. 静. The character means quiet. It is also the name of the district where he lived out his last years.
The ball is quiet because he was.
It is named for the district. It is named for him.
M.Y. · 静安, SHANGHAI · 2026