Hubei Chufeng Heli

The Xinhua Road Sports Centre is a 22,140-seat municipal stadium in Wuhan.

The club came out of a merger on 8 July 2016. The first name was Wuhan Chufeng Heli. From 2018 it played as Hubei Chufeng United, and on 11 January 2021 it became Hubei Istar — 湖北青年星.

Its competition is the Chinese Champions League, the fourth tier of the domestic pyramid. That is a division of short seasons and small travelling parties, and a 22,140-seat municipal stadium is a large room for it. The gap between the ground and the level of football played in it is the plainest fact about the club: Wuhan is a city of several million, and the fourth division is where this particular part of it plays.

Wuhan's football has rarely run in a straight line. Clubs here have folded, relocated and been rebuilt under new ownership, and a side assembled from one amateur team and the leftovers of another belongs to that pattern rather than standing apart from it. The name changes track shifts in backing more than anything on the pitch.

What holds steady is the address. Xinhua Road has taken in whichever club needed a pitch in the centre of the city, and for a decade now that has been this one.