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Chain smoking under the fluorescent lights of a cavernous billiards hall in Beijing, Brother Yuan can’t stop smiling. The previous day, along with 150 million other people across China, he had been 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, says of the generation Z upstart who on 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 says. “I recall two Chinese players participated, but they clearly had very little idea how to play snooker. It was actually quite funny to watch.”
Nowadays, Chinese snooker is no laughing matter. Zhao’s victory on Monday completed his comeback from a 20-month suspension for involvement in a match-fixing ring that has been described as the biggest scandal in snooker’s history. Snooker’s governing body charged 10 Chinese players with match-fixing offences in January 2023 and handed out bans ranging from 20 months to a lifetime. Zhao did not directly throw a match but he accepted charges of being party to another player fixing two games and betting on matches himself.
His display of genuine remorse since the scandal was exposed and his rise to the top from being relegated to the amateur tour as part of his punishment has won him legions of fans in China and beyond.
“Honestly, at first I didn’t think he’d beat [Mark Williams],” says a snooker fan surnamed Xu who works at KO Snooker Bar in Beijing, referring to the three-time world champion who was Zhao’s opponent in the final. “That shows he’s really put in the work. He’s impressive.”
Fans online have been similarly impressed. The hashtag about Zhao’s win was viewed more than 180m times on Weibo. Arriving at Shenzhen Bao’an airport on Thursday, a slightly bewildered Zhao was greeted by hordes of fans thrusting flowers into his arms and reporters thrusting microphones. “Thanks again everyone for your support. I’ll start again and take it slow, and continue to achieve better results in snooker,” Zhao said.
Zhao hails from Shenzhen, a city on the border with Hong Kong that is known for having the most developed snooker culture in China, thanks in part to its proximity to the former British colony. In the 1990s, as people flocked to the city during the era of reform and opening up in which China underwent rapid economic development, snooker halls “sprang up like mushrooms after rain”, according to a Shenzhen state media article published this week to celebrate Zhao’s win.
Ding Juhui, China’s most successful snooker player before Zhao came on to the scene, moved to Shenzhen at a young age to train owing to the city’s better snooker opportunities, the article said.
Since the 1990s, snooker has boomed in popularity across the country, and Zhao’s victory is expected to push it even higher. An estimated 50 million people play the sport and China has 300,000 snooker halls, up from 34,000 in 2005. Chinese eight-ball, a variant on pool, is even more popular.
Sun Baochen opened KO Snooker Bar in Beijing’s upmarket Sanlitun district in February. He’s hoping to capitalise on any new Zhao-led boom. Already he spends up to 16 hours a day at the club, which is open around the clock. Business has been “extremely busy”, he says, although on a Tuesday evening there are only about a dozen customers. Zhao’s victory will “definitely” boost the footfall, Sun says. “My whole WeChat Moments feed was talking about it. People were going crazy. It’s something the whole country is proud of.”
Yuan beams: “It’s going to create a huge wave of interest. And there are a lot of people in China.”
Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu and Lillian Yang
