Chinese fans welcome former Chelsea star Didier Drogba at Pudong airport on Saturday. Pic/AFP

“What I experienced at the airport this morning was unbelievable. Even when I was at Chelsea I never experienced anything like this,” the 34-year-old told reporters at a press conference to launch his career with Shanghai Shenhua.

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The Ivory Coast striker sealed a deal that Chinese and British media have said is worth 200,000 pounds ($314,000) a week, making him the highest-paid player in China and in the top bracket globally.

Didier Drogba

But he insisted money was not the reason he had moved to a side languishing near the bottom of China's Super League, just weeks after he scored the penalty that won Chelsea the European Champions League.

“China is a big sports country and it is a big challenge. For me it would have been easy to go to another team in Europe but I chose China because of the challenge,” he said.

“The money is not the most important, everybody knows that I give a lot of money to my foundation... I didn’t come to China with the idea of making a lot of money.”u00a0