Do you know Ray?
a.k.a. Taiwan's most famous high schooler ("台灣最強高中生")
Did you know there’s an 18 year old Taiwanese student (now graduated) who hangs out with the likes of Kevin Hart, Chris Brown, and Dwight Howard? He’s got 2M followers on Twitch, 2M IG followers, close to 1M youtube followers, and hangs out with Kim Kardashian!
He also was just featured in his own GQ endorsement video talking about the “ten things he can’t live without” (#1 is his Taiwanese passport).
This week, he lit up the court at a charity basketball game, including a monster end-of-game half court shot —
Most Taiwanese (under the age of 20) don’t know about him but US fans recognize him on the street and foreigners get their understanding of Taiwan from him.
Who is Ray?
Ray Chen-Ruei Hsu is a regular Taiwanese high schooler who happened to see his favorite Twitch streamer Kai Cenat outside a convenience store in Japan. Kai Cenat is the world’s leading Twitch streamer, having set the record for most subscribers and for his “Mafiathons” streaming 24 hours a day for 30 days.
Normally, you would just get a photo with your celeb idol or maybe an autograph, but instead Ray invented a phrase —-
God Did!
At the time when Ray met Kai in Japan, his english wasn’t very good. So, Ray said to Kai “God Bless You”. And Kai said back, “God Bless you!” and Ray said, “God Did!”, meaning "God did bless me to be able to meet you”. Kai was so amused and moved, he streamed out to all his fans, “Ray is my Taiwanese brother.”
That kicked off a beautiful friendship, where Kai brought Ray to the US, introduced him to his group AMP (Any Means Possible), even shot a Rush-Hour like short film with him called Global Pursuit.
All the while, they recorded funny videos and streamed their lives.
Kevin Hart even stopped by and Ray called him short…
Ray even went to his 1st NBA game and shooting range (to prepare for Ray’s military training in Taiwan).
One of the most widely shared videos is when someone asked Ray’s name and Ray replied “you mean my Chinese name?” (a natural reaction for Ray, whenever someone asks him his name); and Kai said, “You’re not even Chinese, you’re Taiwanese…you’re not even from China”.
Then, last May, Kai came to Taiwan to attend Ray’s high school graduation —
Kai and Ray built up a fervent fan following on their streams, and Ray became Taiwan’s most famous high-schooler.
However, controversy →
Recently, while everyone supports Ray for being so outgoing and unafraid, meeting and bonding with the world’s most prolific streamer, there has been criticism about Ray’s profanity filled english and overall style. Last year, Ray said the hardest part about streaming was not being able to use the N-word.
And this week, at Kai’s Streaming University, he cursed out his vice principal and called his professor a b*tch, and finally got expelled.
To the point where Kai says to Ray “stop acting stupid!”
What will happen to Ray next? Or, is this all an act to get more streams and views??
Guess we’ll just have to keep watching.
CODA
Recently NBA superstar Dwight Howard, who spent a year in Taiwan playing basketball got in on the action. He brought Taiwanese surprise for Ray.
Not surprisingly, Ray was not amused…