China is the birthplace of football, the most popular game in the world, though the Chinese football team has time and again disappointed football fans in international competitions. Football was called cu ju (kick ball) in ancient China. In the inions on bones and tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty, there were the characters for cu ju and deions of such a game. The sport was quite popular in the Warring States Period. Historian Sima Qian writes in the Biography of Su Qin in the Historical Records that residents of Linzi, the capital of Qi state, loved playing musical instruments and chess games, and kicking balls. Ge Hong (c.281-341), a noted doctor of the Jin Dynasty, writes in his Miscellanea of the West Capital a story about football: When Liu Bang (c.256 BC or c.247 BC-195 BC) became the first emperor of the Hart Dynasty, he brought his father to the capital and treated him with all kinds of luxuries. But his father was not happy, for he missed the life in the hometown, where he could buy wine, enjoy cockfighting, and play football. To make his father happy, Liu Bang had a new Fengcheng town built after his hometown Fengyi, and moved all the people from Fengyi to Fengcheng, so that his father could play football with his old playmates.

The first book on football was also published in the Han Dynasty. The ball of that time was made of leather and hair: several pieces of leather were sewn together into a cover, and filled with a mass of hair. The first inflated football was made in the late Tang Dynasty, with an animal's bladder inside the leather cover. In the Song Dynasty, the cover of the football increased from 8 to 12 pieces of leather.