Chapter 22. WE's League of Legends Captain: Misaya, Yu Jingxi

A chapter from ONE MORE WAY: The History Behind Chinese Esports, by BBKinG (Liu Yang). Translated from the Chinese original: 二十二 WE.LOL队长 若风Misaya

First published in the author's Zhihu column on December 12, 2013: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/19635952

This translation was reviewed against the Chinese original on July 29, 2026. If you spot a mistranslation, a wrong name, or a factual error, please open an issue or send a pull request.

One day in 2007, Ruofeng argued with his parents about school again. This argument was fiercer than any before it. He bolted out of the house alone, ran far from home, and found himself walking down a long road. The wind was strong that day. As he walked, he thought how good it would be to live like the wind: free and unbound. That was where his player name came from. Ruofeng means "like the wind."

Five years later, on October 28, 2012, Ruofeng stood with his teammates on the WEM championship podium as captain of the League of Legends team at China's most famous esports club. This time he did not cry. He was almost calm. Afterward, he modestly said that the tournament had revealed many weaknesses the team still needed to address. They would improve together and pursue more championships and honors.

A fighter who had fallen and risen countless times was finally maturing. Before reaching that point, like so many esports players of his generation, he had endured years of misunderstanding from his family and grueling training.

Rebellion

Ruofeng was born on October 19, 1992, in Shaodong, Hunan. His family later moved to Xiangtan because of his parents' work. His player ID is Misaya and his Chinese name is Yu Jingxi, but until he entered high school, he had used a different Chinese name, Yu Jingxiong. His mother came to believe that his rebellious streak might have something to do with the name, so she changed it to Yu Jingxi.

An incident during his first year of high school left him deeply disillusioned with school, and he ran away from home several times. His frantic mother eventually arranged a transfer. Just two months into the new school, Ruofeng forgot to wear his uniform. The head of his grade berated him at the school gate, singled him out as a transfer student, and never gave him a chance to explain. The humiliation shattered his dignity. He never returned to that school.

By 2008, Ruofeng felt lost. He loved football, games, and literature, but neither society nor the examination system valued those interests. He lost all interest in school and stopped attending.

His parents' disappointment and his own stubbornness

His father was a university professor with postdoctoral training and had always held high expectations for his son. During this period, his disappointment reached its limit. The relationship between father and son came close to breaking down entirely.

His mother, a middle school English teacher, worried herself sick over him. She hoped he would change course but dared not push too hard, fearing that he might run away again. She bought him a computer to keep him out of internet cafés. Those were suffocating months for Ruofeng. Determined to prove that he had chosen the right path, he practiced Dota obsessively at home. He even timed his meals to avoid his parents' gaze and thought of nothing except becoming stronger. This continued for two years.

Driven by that single desire to improve, he trained relentlessly, slept only two or three hours a day, and constantly studied Dota match replays and tutorials. Online, he met Aayaya, captain of the Hunan team Tianma. His performance in practice matches earned him a place on the team's online roster. For a time, he swept every local prize in Hunan.

Two failed attempts at turning professional

In 2008, a man in Wuhan claimed that he was assembling a professional team. Professional Dota teams were rare, and Ruofeng desperately wanted to turn pro. He took the 1,000 yuan in New Year gift money he had saved and traveled to Wuhan. Once there, the man said that he needed to pay the rent but had no cash. Ruofeng was only 16. Having come so far, he felt he should trust the man and handed over the money. The man then disappeared. Deeply embarrassed, Ruofeng had to borrow money from others just to get home.

What surprised him after he got back was that his mother did not scold him. She thought he had gone about the whole thing in earnest and that only the result had turned out badly. From then on she began to encourage him.

That first failure did not stop him. In August 2009, he met the well-known Dota player ZSMJ, and the two became close friends. One day in October, ZSMJ brought good news. He wanted Ruofeng to join him on FTD, a team being formed by Wu Sheng, whose player ID was 2009 and who later became known as the "Nine Gods." After tryouts, ZSMJ and Ruofeng secured the final two places on the FTD roster. Ruofeng moved to Hangzhou and began professional training.

FTD had apparently recruited five core players in an effort to maximize its overall strength. Trouble began as soon as training started because none of them wanted to play support. Ruofeng was assigned the role. He had never played support and was not good at it, but every team needed a division of labor. He began learning Lion, known in Chinese as the Demon Witch. He sought advice from many people and practiced that hero alone every day. A month later, he still felt that he was not good enough. Convinced that he was holding the team back, he left a letter for his teammates and walked away.

Two failed attempts to turn professional hit Ruofeng hard, but he continued training. An opportunity finally arrived at WCG 2010. TOT player chuan was a foreign national and therefore ineligible for the Chinese qualifier, so the team recruited Ruofeng at short notice to take his core position. Ruofeng spent 15 days training intensively in Suzhou against established professionals such as 430 and KSSSS. The team had opportunities during the tournament but still lost to NV, LGD, and EHOME. Ruofeng found himself back where he had started.

The defeat at WCG 2010 forced Ruofeng to reassess his life. He had spent two years earning no money and receiving no education, which left him feeling guilty toward his family. He was also disappointed with his own Dota performance and began to wonder whether he was suited to this path. He promised his mother that he would return to school, hoping to bring his parents some comfort. He picked up his books, studied intensively, entered a three-year media college program in Hunan, and began a different life.

Open minded parents and an unfinished promise

After seeing how seriously Ruofeng pursued his esports dream, his mother made him a promise: if he wanted to play professionally while at college, his parents would not stand in his way. In September 2010, Ruofeng played League of Legends for the first time at school, and another journey began.

At the time, Ruofeng and Ayaya played for Dream in Changsha. It was there that he met Joker, who later became WE's coach. To enter Tencent's TGA tournament, the team trained online every day. Within a month, they had reached the top 30 on the Chinese server and beaten every team they faced online. I still remember the night of the final online match. Everyone in our dormitory watched Ruofeng play as he and his teammates communicated constantly over voice chat. It was nearly dawn when they won, and Ruofeng let out a roar that the entire building could probably hear. It was an exhilarating victory. Unfortunately, they lost the offline TGA final to EHOME, then the only professional League of Legends team in China. Even so, their run attracted attention.

An invitation from the esports powerhouse WE

The performance of Ruofeng and his teammates impressed WE managers Pei Le, known as KinG, and Zhou Hao, known as ZAX. After repeated discussions, Ruofeng and his teammates decided to move to Shanghai and join the world-famous esports club Team WE as professional League of Legends players.

Life at WE was not easy. China had no League of Legends tournaments at the time. To improve, Ruofeng and his teammates endured 200 milliseconds of latency and played foreign teams on the North American server every night from midnight until noon the next day. Tournaments were so scarce that even events offering only a few thousand yuan attracted many strong teams. Those days at WE were painful and joyful at once.

WE's stable training environment and years of management experience soon produced rapid improvement. On October 1, 2011, at the IEM world event in Guangzhou, WE's League of Legends squad defeated CLG of the United States, AAA of Europe, and Flash of Singapore to claim its first international championship and US$15,000 in prize money. In November, the team won the TGC Grand Prix and 200,000 yuan. More victories followed in 2012, including titles at WGT, NGF, and TGA 2012. In August, the team spent a month competing at OGN in South Korea.

As captain of WE's League of Legends team, Ruofeng was invited by Riot Games to attend its annual meeting in the United States as a representative of China's professional players. In 2012, he represented China at the Season 2 World Championship organized by Riot in Los Angeles.

A father's love weighs more than a mountain

After losing to iG at the WCG 2011 China national final, Ruofeng was devastated. WCG meant a great deal to him, and he desperately wanted to win. After the defeat, he cried for 30 minutes. Back at the hotel, he called his father on his own initiative for the first time. Even Ruofeng found the impulse strange. His father had spent much of Ruofeng's childhood away studying, so they had spent more time apart than together. For a period, Ruofeng resisted all of his father's advice and dismissed it as nagging. His father eventually stopped trying, and the two barely communicated for a long time.

That day, Ruofeng cried on the phone and apologized to his father, saying that he felt he had disappointed his parents for years. To his surprise, his father did not blame him. Instead, he encouraged Ruofeng and affirmed the value of what he was doing. Years of estrangement vanished in an instant. Father and son became good friends who often called each other to talk, and Ruofeng was delighted.

When Yu Jingxi became the wind, he grew up. Ruofeng, Misaya.