It takes a lot to rattle Marco Fu. After all, we are talking here about a man that man when unwillingly and wrongly dragged into the ‘Chinese cheating’ row a couple of years ago responded with the sledgehammer blow: “Everyone is entitled to their opinion.” So it should come as no big surprise that he is not in the least bit fussed when it comes to how he is regarded when it comes to nationality. His birthplace of Hong Kong, of course, has technically for many years been part of China but the 36-year-old Fu insist he would be happy to be introduced as being from the Moon as long as he is winning.

World No9 Fu said: “I don’t mind at all whether people write Hong Kong or China in reports, or when I am introduced into the arena. I see myself as both from Hong Kong and Chinese, it’s really like saying Jimmy White is from London. He is also from England. Hong Kong is still a special administrative region. It is Chinese but even there has kept some separate identity. I mainly get introduced in the UK as being from Hong Kong, in China tournaments they would say ‘China Hong Kong’. It is a bit different, because they wouldn’t say ‘China Shanghai’ just because a player came from Shanghai. And then in the Asian Games there are three separate teams, China, China Hong Kong and China Macau.”