BIT

In 2000 the university turned that side into a club, and six years later it had won China League Two. The players signed on as professionals that same season, which meant a squad drawn from an engineering school now kept the same registration as the men they were playing against.

What followed was a season in the second tier that still stands as the club's high-water mark: seventh place in 2008. The trophies since have come from a different competition. Eight titles in the Chinese University Football League — four of them in the early years, four more between 2011 and 2015 — describe a team that has been more consistently dominant among students than among professionals, and the club has never pretended otherwise.

The name changed almost as often as the sponsor did. Beijing Aigo, then Beijing Guirenniao, then Beijing 361° Students, then Beijing BIT Xinyuan — four titles in eight years, with the city the one fixed part of it. In 2017 the student and professional sides were formally separated, ending the arrangement that had made the club unusual in the first place.

Home is the BIT Eastern Athletic Field, 5,000 seats on the university's own grounds, orange shirts and white shorts. The Student Army nickname has outlasted every sponsor's version of the badge.

The furthest the club has gone in the Chinese FA Cup is the third round, in 2014. The immediate work is narrower than that: holding a place in the lower divisions with a squad that no longer doubles as the university team.