BEFORE Hu JINZHOU began his climb into the foothills of fame, as a professional player of computer games in China's multi-billion-dollar livestream industry, he was a schoolboy tearaway. He got into playground fights, tried to sell his textbooks to classmates and sneaked out after dark for some online gaming.Back then, Mr Hu's reluctance to conform was a drama played out on a small stage. "Our hair went white trying to straighten him out," sighs his stepfather, Cai Hongbo, recalling nights spent hunting for the boy in the internet cafes of Dangyang, a factory town in Hubei, a central province. Quick-witted and popular, if not with teachers, Mr Hu shrugged off efforts to control him. "We'd get him to kneel..." recalls his mother, Zhao Aiying. "...To write letters of apology," chips in her husband at their foot-massage parlour on a busy market street, where traders sell roasted nuts, vegetables of the brightest green and fish from the nearby Yangzi river. Their son embarked on a life of menial, migrant jobs.
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