There are a lot of things special about The International and it all starts from the qualifiers. This year, a surprise package was delivered to the community in the very first regional qualifiers to take place for TI8, the Chinese Regional Qualifiers, which shot out a name few would have predicted to see in Vancouver -Team Serenity! Team Serenity got into the regional qualifiers after making it through the first Open Qualifier for China. The team was quite unknown and according to Nahaz, had played just 22 official games before the Regional Qualifiers for China.

When you just woke up and a team you never heard of just dumpstered LFY and iG in the China qualifiers 😶 — Nahaz (@NahazDota) June 20, 2018

In the regional qualifiers, Team Serenity made it into second place in the all-play-all format to secure a place in the playoff bracket. A notable team that did not make it through was Keen Gaming. In the playoffs, Team Serenity defeated LFY 2-0 and Invictus Gaming 2-1 to cement a place at TI 8. Any team that can beat those two teams deserves to be at TI. I’m not saying LFY and Invictus Gaming are the best Chinese Teams out there. They are but a shadow of the teams they were last season. However, most of the community expected any two of LFY, Invictus Gaming or Keen Gaming to make it through. Invictus Gaming eventually did make it through as the second placed team.

When I say Team Serenity are the ‘Unknown’ entity, it literally means they are a lot like Team Unknown from Peru, who were a totally unknown entity in 2015 when they made it to the Frankfurt Major through the Open Qualifiers. Not just that, they managed to eliminate Newbee at the event. Serenity are a lot like that, with not too much known about the team and the players. What do we know about the five that constitute this team?

This is Team Serenity’s roster that will be going to TI 8:

Jin ‘zhizhizhi’ Zhiyi

Zhang ‘Zyd’ Quanda

Zhao ‘XinQ’ Zixing

Xiong ‘Pyw’ Jiahan

Xiao ‘XCJ’ Chaojian

All the players joined the organization at different times. The last piece of Serenity’s puzzle was completed when Zyd joined in the March of 2018. The team had a good three months to gel and practice together, but never made it out of the regional qualifiers for the DPC events. This could be because that they were still figuring out how to play best as a team as well along with the fact that the qualifiers for the DPC events had either one or more of the four Chinese teams that got a direct invite to TI 8. Without digressing a lot, let’s decipher Team Serenity on a player to player basis:

1) Jin ‘zhizhizhi’ Zhiyi

zhizhizhi is one of the better known players in the team. He played for EHOME.K and then for Keen Gaming before transferring to Serenity. zhizhizhi got famous ins China for playing with the streamer OB (Old Boy). He was one of the few 9k+ MMR players on the China server, but he was referred to as the weakest 9k God due to his poor performances in the professional scene. I guess that’s a title he might leave behind now.

2) Zhang ‘Zyd’ Quanda

Zyd was the last player to join the squad. Having played for CDEC Avengers before Serenity, the mid player is one of the enigmas of the team with not a lot of history in the professional scene. This

3) Zhao ‘XinQ’ Zixing

XinQ is probably the most famous of the five forming Serenity, and it’s not necessarily for the right reasons! He came into the limelight when LGD Gaming’s owner, Ruru, found him on a Dota 2 game show in 2014. He was famous for winning a game with Invoker, playing with one hand while eating noodles with the other. Yeah, imagine that.



XinQ sure loves his Noodles

Watch the video around the 9 minute mark for a special noodle eating performance

After being discovered as a top player, he went on and played for TongFu for a while and For The Dream (FTM) after that. But he never really made a splash and a lot of that is attributed to his cockiness. A player with a lot of skill, XinQ is also one who is quite toxic in pubs and plays to show off instead of playing to win. He is famous for buying Blink Dagger on Queen of Pain, which is pretty much what he did in the Winner’s Bracket final game of the TI 8 regional qualifiers against Invictus Gaming. Actually, took it up a notch and also got a Dagon!

The patented QoP build – Blink Dagger into Dagon

Not approached by top teams despite his talent due to his cockiness and laziness, it seems XinQ has found the right set of team mates that will bring his best qualities to the front when they battle it out against the best in the world.

4) Xiong ‘Pyw’ Jiahan

Not a lot is known about Pyw. He is a player new to the scene with Serenity being his first top tier team.

5) Xiao ‘XCJ’ Chaojian

XCJ was the first of the current members to join Team Serenity, back in September 2017. Before Serenity, he played in Team Max along with Yang ‘Chalice’ Shenyi, who’s made it big with LGD Gaming. But XCJ was kicked from the team for his poor performances. A few months down the line, it seems he has exorcised the demons of the past and is ready to look ahead.

All five players from Team Serenity are in the top 100 in the Chinese Leaderboards. Only PSG.LGD and Newbee can boast about that amongst the other Chinese teams.

So there we have it. A team of players who are either new to the scene or known to the community for the wrong reasons (before making it to TI 8). The team not only has raw talent and a hunger to do well, but their play style is relatively, which can act as a major weapon in their arsenal. Having nothing to lose and everything to gain, Team Serenity have the freedom of playing their hearts out in Vancouver without a lot of people expecting anything from them. From my point of view, I don’t think this team will make it to the top six at TI 8, but they definitely won’t be pushovers like Fnatic from TI 7. This is one team that is bound to deliver some upsets, so the bigwigs better watch out!

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