Chinese Beaver

2022viral videoclassic

Chinese Beaver is a series of 3D CGI animations posted to Bilibili by user 乙人教动画 starting in November 2022, featuring a gopher or beaver character re-enacting scenes from Hong Kong films and Chinese TV dramas. The clips went viral on Twitter and TikTok in November 2023 and got folded into the Literally Me Guys genre.

cgi animation memeschinese origin memesanimal memesliterally me memesglobal crossover memes

Overview

Chinese Beaver is a run of short 3D CGI animations starring a stocky rodent-like character that looks somewhere between a bear, a beaver, a gopher and a groundhog1. The clips take dramatic live-action scenes, most famously from the Hong Kong film series A Better Tomorrow and the 2023 Chinese TV drama The Knockout, and re-stage them with the same blocking, camera angles and dialogue but rendered in low-budget CGI1.

The character is also called the Chinese Gopher or the A Better Tomorrow Bear, and the humor comes from the mismatch between the serious source scenes and the goofy, oddly proportioned animal actor1. English-speaking Twitter users latched onto the videos in late 2023, quote-tweeting them with reaction jokes and eventually pulling the character into the Literally Me Guys template1.

How It Spread

On November 16th, 2023, TikTok account @10254446zgw reposted both Bilibili animations, and the two uploads pulled in about 983,500 and 250,900 plays over four days3. Two days later the same account uploaded side-by-side edits pairing the animations with their live-action source scenes, which commenters identified as coming from A Better Tomorrow3.

The jump to English-speaking Twitter came on November 17th, 2023, when @DamielBernaldo reposted one of the @10254446zgw TikToks and racked up over 20.2 million views and 27,000 likes in three days4. Quote tweets rolled in almost immediately, including a November 19th QRT from @DBloxkzTrinidad in the style of the This Probably Funny AF format that pulled 63,000 likes in a day1. An English-dubbed edit shared by @KmaFr_ on November 29th, 2023 picked up around 11,000 likes in five days5.

The series kept going into 2024. On March 19th, 2024, 乙人教动画 posted a new Bilibili animation that added a monkey character alongside the beaver, and the clip cleared 25,000 likes over two months6. That video was based on the "Tell Lao Mo, I want to eat fish" scene from The Knockout, a 2023 Chinese crime drama1. A May 11th, 2024 tweet from @ascinhiding, captioned "the budget went up wtf," pushed the newer entry past 84,000 likes in two days1.

How to Use This Meme

The videos are typically shared as standalone reposts, often paired with a side-by-side of the original live-action scene so viewers can catch the shot-for-shot match3. On Twitter, a common convention is to quote-tweet the clip with an unrelated caption about a personal mood or situation, treating the beaver's dramatic delivery as a reaction to whatever the poster is describing1. Users who slot the character into the Literally Me Guys template will often use a still frame of the beaver mid-scene1.

Frequently Asked Questions

Chinese Beaver

2022viral videoclassic

Chinese Beaver is a series of 3D CGI animations posted to Bilibili by user 乙人教动画 starting in November 2022, featuring a gopher or beaver character re-enacting scenes from Hong Kong films and Chinese TV dramas. The clips went viral on Twitter and TikTok in November 2023 and got folded into the Literally Me Guys genre.

cgi animation memes chinese origin memes animal memes literally me memes global crossover memes

Overview

Chinese Beaver is a run of short 3D CGI animations starring a stocky rodent-like character that looks somewhere between a bear, a beaver, a gopher and a groundhog1. The clips take dramatic live-action scenes, most famously from the Hong Kong film series A Better Tomorrow and the 2023 Chinese TV drama The Knockout, and re-stage them with the same blocking, camera angles and dialogue but rendered in low-budget CGI1.

The character is also called the Chinese Gopher or the A Better Tomorrow Bear, and the humor comes from the mismatch between the serious source scenes and the goofy, oddly proportioned animal actor1. English-speaking Twitter users latched onto the videos in late 2023, quote-tweeting them with reaction jokes and eventually pulling the character into the Literally Me Guys template1.

How It Spread

On November 16th, 2023, TikTok account @10254446zgw reposted both Bilibili animations, and the two uploads pulled in about 983,500 and 250,900 plays over four days3. Two days later the same account uploaded side-by-side edits pairing the animations with their live-action source scenes, which commenters identified as coming from A Better Tomorrow3.

The jump to English-speaking Twitter came on November 17th, 2023, when @DamielBernaldo reposted one of the @10254446zgw TikToks and racked up over 20.2 million views and 27,000 likes in three days4. Quote tweets rolled in almost immediately, including a November 19th QRT from @DBloxkzTrinidad in the style of the This Probably Funny AF format that pulled 63,000 likes in a day1. An English-dubbed edit shared by @KmaFr_ on November 29th, 2023 picked up around 11,000 likes in five days5.

The series kept going into 2024. On March 19th, 2024, 乙人教动画 posted a new Bilibili animation that added a monkey character alongside the beaver, and the clip cleared 25,000 likes over two months6. That video was based on the "Tell Lao Mo, I want to eat fish" scene from The Knockout, a 2023 Chinese crime drama1. A May 11th, 2024 tweet from @ascinhiding, captioned "the budget went up wtf," pushed the newer entry past 84,000 likes in two days1.

How to Use This Meme

The videos are typically shared as standalone reposts, often paired with a side-by-side of the original live-action scene so viewers can catch the shot-for-shot match3. On Twitter, a common convention is to quote-tweet the clip with an unrelated caption about a personal mood or situation, treating the beaver's dramatic delivery as a reaction to whatever the poster is describing1. Users who slot the character into the Literally Me Guys template will often use a still frame of the beaver mid-scene1.

Frequently Asked Questions