Most people think China’s best FPS players are young pros – insane reaction time, training 24/7.
But honestly? For a lot of us regular players, the real legend is a 58-year-old retired auntie. We call her Aunt Juan.
Here’s what happened.
Late 2024, an exhibition match.
On the other side: donk, 17 years old. Just won CS Player of the Year. Absolutely untouchable.
On this side: Aunt Juan, 58. Used to work as a CNC technician. Regular person.
3 minutes and 35 seconds in.
Aunt Juan hits a no-scope flick – clean headshot. On donk.
The chat exploded: “HACKER” “58???” “NO WAY”
Aunt Juan didn’t say a word. She turned on TWO cameras – one on screen, one on her hands and keyboard. Live. No hiding, no excuses. Just kept playing.
The chat did a complete 180.
And then someone dropped the line that became an instant meme:
“60 is the prime age for aim training.”
To be fair: Aunt Juan isn’t pro-level. She’s strong in public matches, but against top-tier pros? There’s still a gap.
But that’s not the point. The point is the story.
She was bored after retirement. Her son casually said “try CS.” She got hooked. At first she couldn’t even navigate without walking into walls. But she kept going.
7000+ hours later, a retired auntie who used to ask “how do I play this game” one-tapped a world champion.
That’s kind of legendary.
A bit of cultural context:
In China’s FPS scene – especially the old internet cafe CrossFire culture – you find a lot of these people. Uncles, aunties, former “net bar warriors,” ten-year veterans. They’re not necessarily the best. But the energy? Pure “I just love this game.”
We even have a nickname for the scariest ones: “Principals.” Because going up against them feels like getting your homework graded by a teacher (laughs).
Aunt Juan isn’t the most terrifying Principal. But she’s probably the warmest and most lovable one.
What she showed us:
It’s not always about being the best.
It’s about whether you can keep loving something – keep grinding – keep showing up.
“When an ordinary person holds a computer mouse long enough and takes it seriously enough, even a world champion might have to pause for a second.”
TL;DR: Retired 58-year-old auntie was bored, son said “try CS.” 7000 hours later, she no-scope flicked CS prodigy donk in an exhibition match. Accused of hacking? Turned on two cameras and live-streamed her gameplay. Chat went from furious to cheering. This is the most wholesome hardcore energy in Chinese gaming.
I used to be elite-tier at Halo, and honestly the noobs killed me more than people at my level.
At a certain skill level the game changes from “who’s clicking who first” to “who’s controlling the best space/resource/angle”, which becomes “how can I best deny my opponent that angle” which becomes “how can I outmaneouvre the opponent while they try to deny my obvious attempt to deny them the space”.
None of the above enters a noobs head. Which is how I get surprised to death by a kid on his 3rd game.
On the regular I died in Rainbow6. But sometimes I killed high(er) level players.
Same for CS2.
My assumption was that I make so brain dead takes, no player on the actual skill level would foresee that move.
I have revised the post to make it more meaningful, interesting, and objectively neutral, while only briefly touching on the ‘CF Principal culture’."**
“In old Chinese internet cafes, some veteran players are so scary that we call them ‘Principals’ – because playing against them feels like having a teacher grade your homework.”
Nice you already fixed it, I was going to post the following on the reply you had on another post:
I think it’s because they (like myself initially) assume the post was an ad/bot post.
I for one definitely am interested in Chinese net cafe culture. However the initial DM and team mate exchange does not feel genuine and feels like the sort of segue/transition ads make.
Reads a bit better now. Downsides of using LLMs to assist with translations is they can get real weird with their choice in phrasing.
However, my limitation is that I’ve only experienced the online gaming environment from 2012 onward. It’s a real pity, otherwise I’d love to share more. The reason I don’t plan to go into detail is that I don’t want to make uninformed comments on areas I don’t fully understand—that would be irresponsible to my readers and a disservice to fellow gaming enthusiasts. That said, if you’re interested in China’s console gaming scene, we can definitely talk about that. I’ve written about it in detail in some of my previous posts, and the response was pretty good.
Thank you for your recognition and support. If anyone is genuinely interested in CF, they’ll reach out to me, and I’d be happy to share my thoughts privately. As for your interest in the history of Chinese online gaming, I’d recommend a Chinese YouTuber and Bilibili creator, 芒果冰OL. He’s an experienced online game planner who tells stories with objectivity, rationality, and warmth. If you ever need a subtitle translation plugin, I can recommend a tool called Trancy. It offers basic translation features for free, and its AI-powered learning features are quite affordable. I’m not trying to advertise — I just think it might be helpful for you. I’m a paying user myself, and it’s been of great help to me.
The original text I wrote was about another game that is very popular in China but niche abroad — CrossFire (CF). Unfortunately, many people haven’t played it, so they don’t understand and downvoted it.
Oh gosh CrossFire, I played a F2P shooter like 15 years ago or something. You had to buy the different weapons for them to appear in your loadout and they added this sick zombie mode … Do you mean THAT CrossFire?
Pros travel around a lot. I love hopping into community deathmatch and seeing pros warming up. If you manage to kill them even once in a fair-ish head-to-head, it’s a great feeling.
Then you look at their K/D vs yours and snap back to reality.
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Why does this read like a LinkedIn post though?
Machine translation more than likely.
It is. OP said it in another it’s due to bad english (or being self conscious?)
Maybe LLM translation
I used to be elite-tier at Halo, and honestly the noobs killed me more than people at my level.
At a certain skill level the game changes from “who’s clicking who first” to “who’s controlling the best space/resource/angle”, which becomes “how can I best deny my opponent that angle” which becomes “how can I outmaneouvre the opponent while they try to deny my obvious attempt to deny them the space”.
None of the above enters a noobs head. Which is how I get surprised to death by a kid on his 3rd game.
On the regular I died in Rainbow6. But sometimes I killed high(er) level players.
Same for CS2. My assumption was that I make so brain dead takes, no player on the actual skill level would foresee that move.
You should make a video rather than this post. It comes off as insane ramblings and possibly llm generated.
A video on the other hand could easily be listened to, and will last longer on the net.
I have revised the post to make it more meaningful, interesting, and objectively neutral, while only briefly touching on the ‘CF Principal culture’."**
Ah makes alot of sense with how it feels.
deleted by creator
What
Here’s an interesting perspective that might answer your questions.
deleted by creator
I read the first 2 sentences and now I have cancer.
deleted by creator
TL;Dr
Beep boop
deleted by creator
I’m fairly sure you can’t hear enemy voice chat in CS2, so I imagine you wouldn’t hear the theme song. Not sure about the other games tho.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
“In old Chinese internet cafes, some veteran players are so scary that we call them ‘Principals’ – because playing against them feels like having a teacher grade your homework.”
Nice you already fixed it, I was going to post the following on the reply you had on another post:
Reads a bit better now. Downsides of using LLMs to assist with translations is they can get real weird with their choice in phrasing.
However, my limitation is that I’ve only experienced the online gaming environment from 2012 onward. It’s a real pity, otherwise I’d love to share more. The reason I don’t plan to go into detail is that I don’t want to make uninformed comments on areas I don’t fully understand—that would be irresponsible to my readers and a disservice to fellow gaming enthusiasts. That said, if you’re interested in China’s console gaming scene, we can definitely talk about that. I’ve written about it in detail in some of my previous posts, and the response was pretty good.
Thank you for your recognition and support. If anyone is genuinely interested in CF, they’ll reach out to me, and I’d be happy to share my thoughts privately. As for your interest in the history of Chinese online gaming, I’d recommend a Chinese YouTuber and Bilibili creator, 芒果冰OL. He’s an experienced online game planner who tells stories with objectivity, rationality, and warmth. If you ever need a subtitle translation plugin, I can recommend a tool called Trancy. It offers basic translation features for free, and its AI-powered learning features are quite affordable. I’m not trying to advertise — I just think it might be helpful for you. I’m a paying user myself, and it’s been of great help to me.
Very interesting post, thank you for your time writing it. Please keep it up even with the downvotes I heavily enjoyed it
Edit: oh fuck it’s all gone now. Edited out like a night bombing. Litterally 1984
I don’t think that this post deserves all those down votes.
The original text I wrote was about another game that is very popular in China but niche abroad — CrossFire (CF). Unfortunately, many people haven’t played it, so they don’t understand and downvoted it.
Oh gosh CrossFire, I played a F2P shooter like 15 years ago or something. You had to buy the different weapons for them to appear in your loadout and they added this sick zombie mode … Do you mean THAT CrossFire?
yes
That was a very cool game actually
Might be just me but currently OP is everywhere.
Almost a bit bot like going by the frequency.
I don’t have an issue with it but it’s a bit…
I was expecting this sentence to be a “bird in the hand” type metaphor.
"I’ve already revised it to avoid any ambiguity. Thank you for pointing that out.
Oh it wasn’t a criticism, I just thought it was a funny image, someone holding a live mouse and being really serious about it.
…so they don’t understand and downvoted it (by clicking the mouse).
That’s interesting.
I am enjoying your posts, keep sharing!
He is the hard hitter as of right now, but donk is not immortal. He dies quite often.
Edit: Also on chinese servers or something? They couldn’t play with 20 ping within each other.
Pros travel around a lot. I love hopping into community deathmatch and seeing pros warming up. If you manage to kill them even once in a fair-ish head-to-head, it’s a great feeling.
Then you look at their K/D vs yours and snap back to reality.