Shooting stars — why GBA is China's snooker hub

He was just a small boy, "a little taller than the snooker table", and had been handling a cue for a few years — but he already had his life mapped out.

It was more than a decade ago, and Wu Yize was watching the television broadcast of the final of the Snooker World Championship final at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, England.

Thousands of miles away, young Wu was having his own imaginary victory ceremony. "That's what I want," Wu told himself, "I'll stand there too."

In May, Wu's boyhood promise to himself was fulfilled when he won the world championship at the tender age of 22 in the same venue.

The talent pipeline that delivered him from makeshift tables to the pinnacle of the sport has parachuted a generation of Chinese snooker professionals onto the global tour.

The place where young Wu began his full-time pursuit of a snooker career, as well as the national base for professional youth development, is South China's Guangdong province. Its neighboring regions have also played an important role in the sport's development.

Wu spent several years at various training facilities in several Guangdong cities including Dongguan, widely referred to as China's premier "snooker hub".

The official figures don't lie. Over 70 percent of China's professional snooker players have trained in the city at some stage. For aspiring professionals age under 21, that proportion climbs to 90 percent.