The much-anticipated 20th FIFA World Cup kicked off in Brazil today. It seems that many countries in the world are involved in the super carnival. Although the Chinese soccer team is excluded, the whole of Chinese society still joins in the global party. Numerous Chinese fans have experienced a sleepless night, enjoying the warm and sweet feelings of integrating with the world.

Chinese society is never bored by international trends. The setbacks the Chinese soccer team underwent these years have constituted the most dramatic experiences in the country's sports and cultural development since the reform and opening up in 1978. However, we remain enthusiastic as ever for the World Cup.

The disappointing Chinese soccer team has formed a sharp contrast with the excellent performance of China's sports teams at the Olympic Games. The clumsiness of the soccer team's performance is difficult to analyze in a qualitative way and their defects can hardly be overcome one by one. This looks like a burden God has thrust upon us and has become a fact that we must accept.

Our failure in soccer endows Chinese society with a metaphor: No matter how much effort we make, there is always something in the world we can't do well even for a long time. We have to accept some inexplicable limits to our capacities. We are able to accomplish a lot of things, but not all.

Despite our discontent with the Chinese soccer team, we are still passionate about the World Cup as well as soccer. We have learned to enjoy the World Cup and developed the ability and vision to be spectators and share in others' prominence and brilliance.

It is nothing bad to stay up late to watch soccer teams from other countries competing with each other in the soccer fields.

The World Cup is actually a mirror of the further development of globalization and also presents incredible opportunities for small nations to display themselves. Sports hold in store tremendous positive energy for human development and the World Cup is running neck and neck with the Olympic Games to contribute to releasing all that vigor.

Luckily enough, the World Cup keeps bringing joy from time to time to our regular and monotonous lives in modern society.

Many people will stay up all night to indulge themselves in the pleasure of watching. During the World Cup period, we can yawn in an imposing manner at work.

Of course it would be better if one day we can see the Chinese soccer team competing at the World Cup. We know clearly that would bring a greater delight to the Chinese public.