The International Championship starts in a few hours in Daqing, China, and here are images shared on various social media, mainly on weibo, of the various opening ceremonies …
There was as always the red carpet…
a gala dinner
And a press conference
Ken Doherty, who only on Thursday night won the CRS Seniors UK Championship in Hull has arrived in Daqing
Good luck to him!
And the very talented Luo Honghao, who is a rookie on tour, only 18 and gave Ronnie a scare last week did this…
This is only a small part of the show that involved a clavierist as well.
Tomorrow, things start in earnest, and, as it transpired, potters are competing ferociously for practice table time…
Ronnie O'Sullivan 
Luo Honghao does seem to be going about things in the right way. Four months into his professional career, and everyone knows his name. I’m not sure if all this publicitly will make him popular with the other Chinese players, but it will definitely help him to get used to the big stage, so long as there aren’t too many distractions from his main job.
As for the ‘pomp & circumstace’ of the Chinese events, we can’t tell what the future of snooker will look like in 20 or 30 years’ time, but I think it will be closer to this than the ‘pie & chips’ atmosphere we get in the British events now. I have never been to the Crucible, but I don’t get much of the sense of ‘history’ in the other venues, or overflowing crowds. Of course I don’t mind at all if the snooker is good!
The events in China and the events in Europe feel like they’re from completely different organizations/tours altogether.
The Chinese events have all the pomp and circumstance, and money, whereas the European events have the history and tradition and feel (to me) more like authentic snooker tournaments, for some reason…
The problem with the European events is that they all are sponsored by bookies, the ranking ones, except the BBC ones are held in cheap venues too. This is not great for the image of snooker and unlikely to attract different types of sponsors. There is clamping on bookies/gambling culture in other sports already, most notably football, for obvious reasons. Gambling addictions are becoming a huge issue in UK, especially with young people, and the gambling culture also feeds match fixing. What will happen when gambling gets a ban similar to the tobacco one? Don’t be fooled it’s coming.
Not quite as good of course playing piano with his other hand as Ronnie is !
Very talented man is Luo.