At 60, China's Auntie Juan Turns 8,000 Hours of Counter-Strike Into a Streaming Career

A retirement hobby puts a world champion in her sights

Zhong Juanjuan was holding a defensive position when Danil "donk" Kryshkovets came into view. The Russian Counter-Strike star was 17 and had recently become a world champion. Zhong, a retiree from Meizhou in China's Guangdong province, landed a headshot before he could eliminate her. She then took out his Team Spirit teammate sh1ro as he moved through the air.

The online exhibition match produced the clip that brought wider attention to the woman known as Auntie Juan. Now 60, she has accumulated more than 8,000 hours in Counter-Strike since starting at 54. Her audience has grown to about 527,000 followers, with roughly 10,000 viewers watching each of her two daily livestream sessions.

The match is dated to December 2024 in several accounts, although another places it in early 2025. It was an entertainment event featuring professional players, rather than a championship tournament. Zhong's achievement was eliminating two leading professionals during play, including the newly crowned champion donk.

Behind those few seconds of shooting lies a much longer story: difficult first lessons, repeated practice, a son who became her manager, and a retirement increasingly organised around viewers, travel and paid streaming work. The mother who once searched internet cafes to bring her son home now needs him to remind her to stop playing and sleep.

Learning to move before learning to shoot

Zhong began playing in 2020 after retiring. Her son, known online as Suode, taught her Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, commonly called CS:GO. The game has since been succeeded by Counter-Strike 2, or CS2.

Counter-Strike is a team shooting game in which players must combine accurate aim with positioning, timing and cooperation. A player can lose an encounter almost immediately after appearing around a corner. Knowing where to aim before an opponent appears can be as useful as reacting quickly afterward.

Zhong initially struggled with much more basic tasks. She walked into walls, had difficulty moving in a straight line and found stairs hard to navigate. After about 10 minutes, the moving view could leave her feeling dizzy. Her early lessons therefore focused on moving, jumping and becoming comfortable with the controls.

Her son introduced practice exercises before exposing her to the pressure of human opponents. She shot targets on training maps and practised against bots, the computer controlled opponents used to rehearse skills. Later, she entered deathmatch sessions, where eliminated players return quickly and can keep working on their aim.

Zhong also had a personal reason to enjoy the genre. As a child, she loved the battle scenes in outdoor film screenings. Decades later, the shooting game gave her a way to take part in action that she had once watched on a screen.

What 8,000 hours of practice looks like

Zhong's routine includes aiming drills, controlling the movement of a weapon during sustained firing, and playing online matches. Recoil control, sometimes called controlling the spray, means adjusting the aim as repeated shots push a weapon away from its starting position.

Accounts of her routine describe seven to eight hours at the computer on some days, including practice and matches. Her two daily broadcasts together last about four to five hours. Those figures describe different parts of her schedule: time spent practising can extend beyond the hours viewers see her live.

One reported exercise involved shooting 150 targets. Zhong completed it in 36 seconds, five seconds faster than her son. That put his time at 41 seconds, making hers about 12% shorter for the same task. The result offers a concrete measure of the skill she has developed through repetition.

More than 8,000 hours across six years works out to roughly three hours and 40 minutes a day on average. Her heavier daily routines show how much time the hobby can now occupy. Zhong attributes her progress to playing consistently rather than to having an unusual natural gift.

The exhibition clip also showed the value of positioning. She was already waiting with her weapon aimed at a place where an opponent might appear. When donk entered her view, she was ready to shoot. Against sh1ro, she tracked an opponent moving through the air and completed another elimination.

A mother and son exchange roles

About two decades earlier, Zhong regarded gaming very differently. Her younger son's schoolwork suffered while he spent time playing in internet cafes. Around 2002, when he was in secondary school, she would ride a bicycle after work to find him, search the rows of computers and bring him home.

Her eventual decision to try the games herself grew partly from curiosity about what had held his attention for so long. Lessons became a shared activity. The son who had once needed supervision began explaining movement, weapons, positioning and tactics to his mother.

Suode now handles the practical work surrounding her broadcasts, including equipment, video editing and tactical guidance. He has left his job to work as her manager. Their family relationship has become a working partnership, with Zhong playing and speaking to viewers while he manages much of the operation around her.

Sleep has become another responsibility. He set the household router to disconnect automatically when she stayed up too late. Accounts put the cutoff at midnight or 2 a.m.; the consistent feature is the reversal of roles, with the son now limiting his mother's gaming hours.

Games have also given the family more to discuss. Instead of arguing only about time spent at a computer, mother and son can talk about a match, a difficult opponent or an improvement in her play.

From a small broadcast to a source of income

Zhong's audience grew from a handful of viewers into a substantial following. Around 527,000 people now follow her, and each of her two daily sessions typically attracts about 10,000 viewers. Broadcasting has become a principal source of income as well as a regular part of retirement.

The beginning of her streaming career is less firmly dated than her first gaming lessons. Accounts place her initial broadcasts in July 2020 or in 2022; a streaming agency agreement is also dated to 2022. By 2025, she had a dedicated esports room.

Her growing visibility brought suspicion as well as support. Some viewers questioned whether another person was controlling the character or whether she was using cheating software. Her son responded by arranging cameras to show her face, hands and keyboard together, with another camera behind her showing the screen.

The setup lets viewers watch her physical actions alongside the game. For a streamer whose age has become part of her public identity, showing the process is now part of the work, alongside entertaining the audience and playing well.

The audience takes her beyond Meizhou

Streaming has changed where Zhong goes as well as how she spends her days. She has travelled to gaming events and met players and fans in cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. Trips connected to gaming have also included Hangzhou.

The journeys bring experiences far beyond the computer. Her travels have included the Forbidden City in Beijing, West Lake in Hangzhou and the Bund in Shanghai. Gaming has become a reason for a retiree from the outskirts of Meizhou to visit places with her son and meet people who recognise her work.

Zhong still enjoys growing flowers and trees. During broadcasts, however, conversation with viewers gives her a different kind of pleasure. She says greater interaction makes her feel more energetic and younger. Recognition can also arrive close to home: she was pleased when a man at a wet market recognised her from gaming videos.

Zhong has challenged expectations that an older mother's time should revolve around household work. Describing that pressure, she asked:

As a mother, should I only be relegated to household chores?

Her choice is concrete rather than theoretical. She has made room for a demanding hobby, turned it into paid work and built a daily routine around an interest she discovered after retirement.

A possible team and a new competition in Guangdong

Zhong's experience sits within a much larger Chinese gaming audience. Figures attributed to the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association put the country's esports audience above 495 million in 2025 and the number of older gamers above 20 million. The figures describe different groups: people who follow esports and older people who play games.

In Chengdu, Zhong met the BSG senior team, whose members had an average age of 65. Her son hopes to form a local Counter-Strike team for older players, with Zhong among its first members. No launch date or confirmed roster has been announced.

Guangdong is also preparing its first provincial esports super league, known as Dianjing Yuechao, with competitions in Valorant and Honor of Kings. Entry is open to ordinary players aged 18 and above. Counter-Strike is not among the announced games, but Zhong also plays Valorant and hopes to experience the event in person.

Her progression has unfolded over several years:

• 2020: Zhong begins learning Counter-Strike after retirement, with her son teaching the controls.
• 2022: An account of her career dates her streaming agency agreement to this year.
• December 2024: Several accounts date the exhibition against donk and sh1ro to this month; another places it in early 2025.
• 2025: Zhong has a dedicated gaming room as broadcasting becomes an established part of her routine.
• At age 60: She has more than 8,000 hours of play and about 527,000 followers.

Key Points

• Zhong Juanjuan, known as Auntie Juan, began playing Counter-Strike at 54 and is now 60.
• She eliminated Team Spirit players donk and sh1ro during an online exhibition match.
• She has accumulated more than 8,000 hours of play and about 527,000 followers.
• Her son manages equipment, editing and tactics, and limits late gaming by scheduling internet disconnections.
• Streaming provides income, travel opportunities and a shared interest for the family.
• Her son hopes to establish a local Counter-Strike team for older players.