How a 60-year-old retiree became a Counter-Strike star
Translated with AI assistance
While economists discuss how to extend the active lives of older people and bring them back into the economy, some are finding new professions on their own. 60-year-old Chinese woman Zhong Juanjuan from Guangdong Province turned her passion for video games into a full-fledged streaming career: she already has around 527,000 followers, and each broadcast is watched by approximately 10,000 people.
The story began with an attempt to fight her own son’s gaming addiction. Twenty years ago, Zhong dragged him out of internet cafes after his passion for games started affecting his studies. In 2020, the situation repeated itself: Suode’s son quit his job and spent a lot of time at the computer. That was when his mother decided to figure out exactly what captivated him so much, and asked him to teach her how to play.
At first, she struggled: Zhong found it difficult to control her character, crashing into walls and barely managing to climb virtual stairs; her deteriorating eyesight and slower reaction time got in the way. But she kept practicing, and over six years she accumulated more than 8,000 hours of gaming experience, mostly in shooters, primarily Counter-Strike.
In 2022, Zhong began streaming live. And in December 2024, she gained particularly widespread fame after an exhibition Counter-Strike match: among her opponents was the 17-year-old Russian esports player Danil «donk» Kryshkovets. During the game, Zhong managed to eliminate him with a precise shot. The moment later spread throughout gaming communities.
The streamer’s age was so unusual for the audience that some viewers suspected someone else was playing on her behalf. Her son set up several cameras to simultaneously show his mother, her hands, and the screen, thereby proving that she was indeed the one playing.
Now Zhong hosts two streams a day, and her new profession has turned out to be significantly more profitable than her previous work. As the Times of India reports, citing Chinese media, by 2025 her streaming income was roughly ten times higher than her former earnings; Zhong became the family’s main breadwinner. Her son, who previously worked as a programmer, is now managing her career as an agent.
The roles in the family have completely reversed: twenty years ago, the mother used to force her son to step away from the computer, but now he is the one making sure she stops playing by midnight, and he has set up the home Wi-Fi to turn off automatically.
Zhong herself sees no reason to limit herself to only traditional activities after the age of 60. «Games train the brain and improve coordination. Isn’t that better than doing nothing?» she says.
The story sounds almost like a joke, but it perfectly illustrates a more serious shift. The longevity economy is not just about medicine, care, and pension reforms. A longer life also means a longer career trajectory, and in professions that until recently simply did not exist for the older generation. In Zhong’s case, her new post-retirement pursuit immediately became her job, a source of income, and an audience of half a million people.
