If you have run into In Chinese in Valorant and moved on without quite understanding it, this is the explanation.

Short answer

In Chinese is a fixed part of Valorant that most players encounter once and remember, whether or not they understood it at the time.

Knowing this does not make you better at Valorant, but it does make the rest of it legible. It appears in supplementary material in more detail than it does in the game. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about.

Where you encounter it

It is more consequential in the late game than the early one, which is why first impressions mislead. The game introduces it quickly and assumes you picked it up, which is where the confusion starts. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. There is a persistent myth attached to it that has never been true in any version.

The wiki entry is thorough and buries the actually useful part six paragraphs down. There is no hidden trick here that the game is keeping from you. Its role has changed across updates, so older discussion describes something slightly different.

What it changes in practice

Two similarly named things exist, and mixing them up explains a lot of contradictory advice. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Whether it is worth going out of your way for depends entirely on how you are playing.

  • Note where it first appears, so you can go back if you need to.
  • Check which version of Valorant any discussion of it is describing.
  • Keep a save or backup from before you start — it costs nothing and occasionally saves an evening.
  • Ignore the myth attached to it; it has never held up.

Common misunderstandings

Community shorthand around it has drifted far enough from the original meaning to cause arguments. A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. Nothing here assumes a particular playstyle beyond wanting the thing to work. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows.

Valorant is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look. Everything below is framed around the current state of Valorant rather than a launch-week impression. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts.

How it connects to the rest of Valorant

Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep. If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. If you are coming to this after a long break, the terminology has probably moved on.

There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why.

What it is

Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. Half the pages on this topic were written for a build that no longer exists, which is why they stop matching what you see. Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional.

Where people go wrong

  • Ignoring the platform-specific note and then wondering why the steps do not line up.
  • Rushing the last step, which is usually the one with the actual requirement in it.
  • Assuming a guide from an older season still describes the current version.
  • Copying a setup wholesale from a streamer without understanding what each part does.

Valorant FAQ

Does this work the same on console and PC?

The logic is identical. Menu paths and button prompts differ, and any real difference is flagged above.

Where can I read more?

The official material covers it in more depth than the game does, and considerably more reliably than aggregated fan pages.

Is this still accurate after the latest Valorant update?

The method is; individual numbers may not be. If a value on your screen differs, trust the screen and keep the sequence.

What if none of this works for me?

Then something in your setup differs from the assumption — version, region or platform. Check those three before anything else.

If you only take one thing from this: the answer near the top is the part that matters, the rest is context.