Jinan Olympic Sports Center Stadium

Xiliu Stadium — the western willow — comes from the roofline, curved to echo a willow leaf.

The stadium went up as the centrepiece of the XI National Games, which the city hosted in October 2009, and everything about the build — groundbreaking in May 2006 — was timed to have it ready for that one autumn. It has carried that role since: a venue built for a single national occasion and kept standing as Jinan's answer whenever something needs a stage large enough for 56,808 people.

It sits on Jingshi East Road in Lixia District, and the grass pitch inside the willow-leaf bowl has hosted the kind of national athletics and football programming that a facility of this scale is built for. There is no shirt sponsor bolted onto the name, no resident tenant whose colours define the place — it remains what it was designed to be, a civic arena rather than a football ground with a diary of fixtures.