Why were Chinese fans spamming "宫监手！准备放监!" when Lynn Vision dominated Liquid? Dust2.us finds out

Liquid started their run at the BLAST.tv Austin Major Stage Three in the worst way possible, with North America's last hope suffering an embarrassing 13-5 defeat to Lynn Vision on Dust2.

While this loss was not the result NA fans were looking for, it was naturally a cause for celebration in the Chinese esports community with many celebrating the underdog team's win over Liquid. On the HLTV post announcing the win, jubilant Chinese fans could be spotted spamming the following phrase "宫监手！准备放监!" or some variation of it When translated to English this phrase becomes the fairly incoherent "Palace guards! Prepare to release the prisoner!," which gets us no closer to understanding why this phrase is so associated with Liquid and Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken — who is at the center of these posts.

Fortunately, we do not have to guess as Dust2.us has spoken to Chinese journalist and Liquipedia editor EndPoem who offered a fascinating explanation of how Chinese culture, language, and memes all inform an incredibly layered "shitpost" in the Chinese scene.

Update: Following publication this article was updated with additional insight and corrections from the Chinese community.

Dust2.us' conversation with EndPoem started with the native speaker explaining how the phrase "宫监手！准备放监!" is quite complex and relies on Chinese fans to know about Twistzz's Counter-Strike career and Chinese proverbs to make the most of the joke.

Part 1: Why Twistzz is called "总监" (Director, Zong Jian in Pinyin):

Twistzz is called "Director" because he pays attention to his hairstyle in every game and his diverse hairstyles leave a deep impression on the audience. This reminds fans of the "hair director" (senior hairdresser) in a barber shop. We call it "发型总监" in Chinese which is shortened to "总监".

This is the base for this meme.

Part 2: "宫监手" (Gong Jian Shou in Pinyin)

"宫监手" contains multiple homophones:

"弓箭手" (archer, the same Pinyin with "宫监手").

"监" (in this situation it means "Director" which refers to Twistzz).

"宫" (short term of "宫斗", which means intrigue or drama/gossip/tea/dirt within a palace in ancient China, or means the drama action when it is considered a verb).

It is generally believed that the reason cadiaN's iteration of Team Liquid disbanded in July 2024 is because of Twistzz and what he said about cadiaN in vlogs and interviews is in stark contrast to his comments after the roster was disbanded.

Part 3: "开宫没有回头监" & "宫监手，准备放监"

"开宫没有回头监" is the homophone of the Chinese proverb "开弓没有回头箭"; it means that once something has been done, it must be continued.

"宫监手，准备放监" is the homophone of "弓箭手，准备放箭" (Archer, ready to shoot)

These are often seen when Twistzz lost the game, and people are shitposting to roast him, also wondering if he'll start new drama to rebuild the roster again.

Part 4: "Why the sports drink"

As seen above with one particular example, Twistzz has been depicted as a Chinese sports drink. EndPoem explained that because "监" is associated with Twistzz Chinese fans have tied him to "监叫" which is a homophone for 尖叫. 尖叫 means to scream and is also the name of the sports drink above, thus placing his head on the bottle.

Overall this simple post is quite layered and touches on a lot of facets of Twistzz's career, personality, and appearance. While small for now compared to other esports, this post provides an interesting case study on the cross-cultural exchange made possible by esports and the increased presence of China in Counter-Strike esports with the growing popularity of Valve's latest title on the mainland.