{"id":71678,"date":"2025-05-09T20:13:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T11:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/may\/09\/chinese-snooker-fans-hail-zhao-xintong-world-champion"},"modified":"2025-05-09T20:13:54","modified_gmt":"2025-05-09T11:13:54","slug":"the-whole-country-is-proud-chinese-snooker-fans-hail-zhao-xintong-triumph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=71678","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The whole country is proud\u2019: Chinese snooker fans hail Zhao Xintong triumph"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Crowning of country\u2019s first world champion set to give fresh boost to sport that has boomed in popularity in China<\/p>\n<p>Chain smoking under the fluorescent lights of a cavernous billiards hall in Beijing, Brother Yuan can\u2019t 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\u2019s with his fellow cue-heads, celebrating the win of China\u2019s first snooker world champion, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2025\/may\/05\/zhao-xintong-beats-mark-williams-to-become-first-chinese-snooker-world-champion\">Zhao Xintong<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s a great role model for young people in China,\u201d Yuan, 55, says of the generation Z upstart who on Monday claimed snooker\u2019s top prize. \u201cHe\u2019s bringing the excitement back.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/may\/09\/chinese-snooker-fans-hail-zhao-xintong-world-champion\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crowning of country\u2019s first world champion set to give fresh boost to sport that has boomed in popularity in ChinaChain smoking under the fluorescent lights of a cavernous billiards hall in Beijing, Brother Yuan can\u2019t stop smiling. The previous day, al&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4154,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,3311,203,42,3312],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-snooker","category-sport","category-world-news","category-world-snooker-championship"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4154"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71678"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71679,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71678\/revisions\/71679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}