Big break Snooker mania greets China's first champion

Chain smoking under the fluorescent lights of a cavernous billiards hall in Beijing, Brother Yuan can't stop smiling.

- Amy Hawkins BEIJING

The previous day, along with 150 million other people across China, he was at home watching the snooker world championships final. Now he’s with his fellow cue-heads, celebrating the win of China’s first snooker world champion, Zhao Xintong.

"He’s a great role model for young people in China,” Yuan, 55, said of the generation Z upstart who last Monday claimed snooker’s top prize. “He’s bringing the excitement back.”

It’s a far cry from the 1980s when Yuan was a young player in Beijing with dreams of going professional. The industry wasn’t well developed and the money wasn’t there. He remembers vividly the 1987 Kent Cup, a snooker tournament held in Beijing.

“All seven of the world’s top-ranked players came. Willie Thorne, Jimmy White, Steve Davis ... At that time, snooker was only played in Zhongshan Park in Beijing. No other places in the city had it, and most people didn’t even know how to play,” Yuan said. “I recall two Chinese players participated, but they clearly had very little idea how to play snooker. It was actually quite funny to watch.”