60yo mother logs 8,000 hours in Counter-Strike, becomes esports star after opposing son's gaming

A 60-year-old Chinese woman who once hauled her son out of internet cafes now plays Counter-Strike seven to eight hours a day and livestreams to more than 400,000 followers. Zhong Juanjuan, from Meizhou in the southern province of Guangdong, has logged more than 8,000 hours in the first-person shooter since taking it up at 54, Beijing News reported.Her younger son, identified as Suo De, has set the family's router to cut the connection after midnight to stop her playing through the night."She used to hunt me down everywhere for playing games. Now I'm the one standing at her door every day urging her to go to bed early," he told the newspaper.Suo De started going to internet cafes around 2002, in his second year of junior high school, and his grades slid. Zhong searched the cafes near his school by bicycle after work and once dragged him home by the arm in front of dozens of other customers, according to Beijing News.Zhong, who left school after the primary grades and worked as a street vendor and a shampoo promoter, dismissed his talk of teamwork and tactics as an excuse to avoid studying.That changed in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic confined the family to their home, the Economic Observer reported, and Suo De, by then out of work, spent his days playing Counter-Strike in his bedroom."I have nothing else to do anyway. Teach me and let me try," Beijing News quoted his mother as telling him.In her first days she could not walk her character in a straight line, kept running into walls and felt dizzy and nauseous after little more than 10 minutes of play, and Suo De urged her to give up.When she refused, he turned the mouse sensitivity down to its lowest setting, stuck red labels on the keys she used most and gave her a notebook to write down the rules.She began livestreaming about a month later on the video platform Bilibili and moved to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in 2023.Yangcheng Evening News put her Douyin following at more than 400,000 in March.To catch up with younger players she spent six to seven hours a day in an aim-training program, and she can break 150 targets in 36 seconds, five seconds faster than her son. Zhong Juanjuan plays a video game in front of a green screen in February 2022. Photo courtesy of Zhong Juanjuan Her breakthrough came in December 2024, when she was invited to an online exhibition match against professionals including the Russian player Danil "donk" Kryshkovets, then 17.Kryshkovets became the youngest player to win both a Counter-Strike Major and its most valuable player award that same month, according to the Shanghai municipal government's English-language portal, and Sixth Tone described him as widely regarded as the best Counter-Strike player in the world.Holding an AK-47 behind cover, Zhong shot him as he crossed a gap in a doorway, then took out his Team Spirit teammate Dmitry "sh1ro" Sokolov from the same spot in the same round, Beijing News reported.Slowed-down replays of the shots spread across Chinese social media and brought a wave of new viewers.Her rise also brought accusations that she was using cheat software or had a younger player off camera doing the shooting.Suo De published her logged playing time, set up extra cameras to show her hands on the mouse and keyboard, and taught himself studio lighting after viewers complained that glare hid her screen.Critics also accused the family of using an elderly woman to make money, he said, and Zhong barely slept for a week and considered giving up streaming.Suo De, a former software engineer, now handles the hardware, the broadcast, video editing and business inquiries. His mother's income in 2025 was 10 times what she earned before gaming, making her the family's top earner, the Economic Observer reported.Zhong had never left Guangdong before she was 57 and has since flown to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu for esports events.A 2021 report by the Chinese magazine E-sports counted 54.4 million esports users aged over 45."Many people think the elderly should just look after grandchildren and dance in public squares, but when I play games I use my brain and train my hand speed. Isn't that much better than sitting around in a daze?" Zhong told Beijing News. "As long as you dare to sit down and learn, it is never too late."