Chapter 27. His Parents Took Him to Tournaments: TED, the Ghost King of the Mountain City

A chapter from ONE MORE WAY: The History Behind Chinese Esports, by BBKinG (Liu Yang). Translated from the Chinese original: 二十七 父母带他打比赛 山城鬼王TED

First published in the author's Zhihu column on December 19, 2013: https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/19639981

This translation was reviewed against the Chinese original on August 1, 2026. If you spot a mistranslation, a wrong name, or a factual error, please open an issue or send a pull request.

TED, whom a lot of people like to call Little Fatty, was in Shijiazhuang with the rest of us on June 24, 2010. That evening, after we had finished GIGABYTE's GIGAJOY campus star tour, we went back to the hotel and I said we should have a chat. Little Fatty said sure, once he had taken a shower. Half an hour later, when I reached his room, he was lying on the bed wrapped in a quilt, propping up his head and watching the World Cup, at first glance rather like a round little hedgehog. When he saw me come in he crawled out of the covers, reached up to switch off the television and said, let us talk.

Who would have thought this was the Ghost King of Chinese Warcraft III? The mild, unhurried young man in front of me had, at the 2008 ROTK tournament between the world's top teams, cut down fifteen of the world's best players from three leading international sides on his own, including MOON and GRUBBY, who were then at the height of their powers, bringing his team back from a hopeless position to win the title.

He was not yet twenty.

Zeng Zhuo, who goes by the English name TED, was born on June 15, 1988, in Yuzhong District, Chongqing, the city known as the Mountain City. His father was a police officer and his mother a clerk at a company. It was a very ordinary family and at the same time a very unusual one, because in some of its ideas about education it was well ahead of its time, and that made TED's life rather different from most people's.

TED's parents were remarkably open-minded about the way their son grew up and gave him every encouragement to do what he loved. Before he was five his father bought him a Famicom, and the two of them often played Battle City together at home. When arcades became popular his mother would take him to the arcade halls, where TED could not even reach the joystick, so he stood on a stool to play.

TED's primary school years are more astonishing still. He was in an experimental class that, from the first year, taught the children to write poetry, learn English, use computers and play the saxophone, published a book of their work every year, and encouraged them to try all kinds of new things and work out what they liked. TED discovered that he liked computers, and before he had even finished primary school he was already an expert, at home with everything from Red Alert and StarCraft to document layout. In his final year of junior high he took first place in Chongqing in the national PowerPoint competition, then went to Beijing for the grand final and finished third.

In his fourth year at primary school, TED often spent his weekends at home playing StarCraft. There was no internet then, so he only played against the computer. One day his mother passed the computer market on her way home from work, saw that a StarCraft tournament was being held and, knowing that TED played the game, entered him for it. TED thought he was unbeatable against the computer, so off he went. He was knocked out in the first round, and his father teased him about it for a long time afterwards.

In 2003, before finishing his last year of junior high, TED came into contact with Warcraft III and joined a local team. One of the strong players on that team used the Undead, and since TED could not beat him whatever he tried, he took up the Undead himself. His first live Warcraft III tournament was again one his mother entered him for as she passed the computer market. This time TED played superbly. Although he was drawn into a group of death, he beat CQ2000, the well-known player who finished runner-up at the WCG world final that year, and several of the strongest players in Chongqing, and he came fourth.

TED says he was so nervous playing 2K that his hands went numb. The referee standing behind him had come over expecting to watch him get taken apart, and when TED won, the man was left staring open-mouthed. CQ2000 took the defeat with real grace. He came over to ask whether TED was from Chongqing and, on hearing that he was, pulled him into a QQ group for the best local players. That was the moment TED properly entered the Chinese gaming scene.

TED is very grateful to those older brothers and sisters in Chongqing. He was only sixteen at the time, and they kept taking him along to tournaments and out to meals. He improved very quickly in that period and moved closer and closer to being the best in the city. By 2005, in his first year of senior high, he had beaten every strong local player to win the Chongqing regional of CIG, and by 2006 there was hardly anyone in Chongqing who could beat him.

TED told me an amusing story from that time. In 2005 he qualified for the CIG national final and went to Shanghai with his father to play in it. It was the first time he had seen in person the people he had previously only read about. What stayed with him most was standing just ahead of suho in the queue for the draw, too excited to dare to speak to him. His results were dreadful. He was knocked out in the first round by KEDA. TED says he was just a nobody back then.

As he grew older, the conflict between schoolwork and gaming gradually came to the surface, and TED's rebellion against his father grew sharper. His parents had supported him in what he loved since he was small, but in traditional Chinese thinking the college entrance examination is not only a fiercely narrow bottleneck, it is a road everybody has to take. TED felt he still had room to improve as a player, and that with more practice he was certain to achieve better results.

The conflict finally erupted as TED was about to enter his final year of senior high. He still remembers that argument with his father, who ended it by shouting that if he was so good at games he could go and support himself with them. TED said, in complete earnest, that he would support himself and his father could watch him do it.

The school, by contrast, was fully behind TED's decision, and the way this experimental school handled it was genuinely unorthodox then. His class teacher had always believed that all roads lead to Rome and that learning belongs to the student rather than being measured by marks. The headmaster was especially supportive. He gave TED special permission not to board at the school, to skip evening self-study and to go home to practise.

His father's attitude also began to soften, and after an influential local sports newspaper in Chongqing devoted half a page to TED's CIG Chongqing title, he finally agreed to TED's proposal to take leave from school. His class teacher carried that newspaper into the classroom and read it out, telling everyone that if you are going to play, this is how you should play.

From then on TED practised obsessively and kept challenging stronger players. If he was beaten one day, he would find a way to win it back the next.

In May 2006, after TED won the WCG Chongqing regional, Pei Le, known as KinG, the manager of WE, the most legendary club in China, got in touch and arranged online matches for him against SKY and SUHO, who were already WCG world champions.

TED says his hands were shaking. SKY and SUHO gave him nothing at all, bewildering him with one tactic after another. When SUHO beat him six times with the same strategy, he suddenly began to feel very small.

Afterwards KinG comforted TED, asked him carefully about his circumstances and then said he was planning to build a second squad at WE.

At that point fate laid two roads in front of TED: the college entrance examination, or a professional career. After thinking it over seriously, he decided he would rather turn professional, and so, on June 15, 2006, his eighteenth birthday, he resolutely boarded a train from Chongqing to Xi'an, where WE's base was at the time.

Dreams come in stages. Once TED had realised his dream of becoming a professional player, what awaited him immediately was hellish training. For three solid months he did not win a single match, either in practice games against his teammates or at tournaments large and small around the country. For someone who had been king in Chongqing, that was an agonising form of mental torture. Everything he learned each day told him flatly that he was not good enough, and still he had to force himself to keep going.

Stay or go? Was he cut out for this? What would he do in the future? For an eighteen-year-old those questions carried no small psychological weight. His salary then was only 500 yuan a month, and to save money he ate one meal and drank one bottle of water a day. To prove something to himself he practised desperately, still losing every day, still reviewing every day, gradually feeling his way towards a style of his own.

Finally, three months later, TED finished third at the WGT China national final, beating several of the country's best players, and WE immediately raised his salary to 1,500 yuan. I asked him whether life got better after the rise. TED narrowed his eyes, smiled and said he could finally afford a late-night meal.

The good times did not last, though. TED spent the whole first half of 2007 in a slump over a relationship. Looking back, he was simply too young and too emotional then, and it affected his results. In October 2007 he met his current girlfriend, and her constant encouragement helped him recover his confidence and throw himself back into training.

Years of accumulated work finally came good for TED in 2008. At ROTK, the tournament between the world's top teams, with WE backed into a corner, he turned the whole thing around by all-killing fifteen of the world's best players in a row and carrying WE to the title. He represented China at ESWC and finished third at the world final in the United States, and he represented China again at the WCG world final in Germany. In 2009 he travelled to Germany with WE for WC3L, overcame the strongest line-ups in the world and won the world championship.

It was three in the morning by the time our conversation was winding down. Little Fatty sat there wrapped in his quilt, smiling as he looked back over it all, with none of the Chongqing hot temper about him and none of the Ghost King's edge, still like a child. Perhaps all of that had been redirected somewhere else, or perhaps the two sides cancelled each other out and left him perfectly balanced.

This is my friend TED, the Ghost King of the Mountain City.