When the world's top tennis players step out onto the lush, green grass of Wimbledon tomorrow, eight-year-old Xue Jian will be tracking their progress from thousands of kilometres away with studious awe.
Xue knows all their names. Posters of stars David Nalbandian, Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova stare down at him every evening as he does his school work at a wooden desk in a dormitory on the outskirts of Jiangmen , Guangdong province.
He knows their techniques too. The dormitory he shares with half a dozen other boys is littered with Chinese tennis magazines with features on the lifestyles of people like Roger Federer and Amelia Mauresmo and training articles on 'How to hit the devastator' and 'How to poach after a strong return of serve'.
But Xue's keenest attention will be reserved for the progress of the players who bridge the gulf between his world and that of superstars like Federer - women like Li Na and Peng Shuai, Zheng Jie and Yan Zi. They are the first generation of players to bring China success on the international stage - Zheng and Yan winning the Australian Open women's doubles in January, the nation's first Grand Slam title, and Li this month becoming the first Chinese singles player to crack the top 30.
Xue's dream is that in a few short years, he will be among the vanguard of a second generation of Chinese stars. He has already begun that journey after being handpicked by the China Tennis Association as a potential star of tomorrow and taken from his home in northern Heilongjiang province to spend the next three years at the country's first official tennis training centre for children in Jiangmen.
China is investing millions of yuan to cement its status as an emerging power in the world of tennis and Jiangmen is where the mainland plans to fast-track its Wimbledon stars of tomorrow. Already used as a national training base, since last year it has been used as an experimental centre where children aged seven or eight undergo intensive training.
