Chinese Beaver

Confirmed 50,506

Part of a series on China. [View Related Entries]

About

The Chinese Beaver, also known as the Chinese Gopher or the A Better Tomorrow Bear, refers to a series of viral animations in Chinese posted to Twitter / X in November 2023, which showed a 3D, CGI character resembling a bear, beaver, gopher or groundhog that was a re-animation of a scene from the A Better Tomorrow film series. Another re-animation was from the TV show Conquer. The videos that were reposted from TikTok gained viral reactions and quote retweets from Western, English-speaking viewers. The animations were originally created by Chinese Bilibili user 乙人教动画 (B teaches animation) in late 2022 and 2023. The Chinese Bear then became associated with the Literally Me Guys genre. In May 2024, a new Chinese Beaver video surfaced, based on a scene from the Chinese TV series The Knockout.

Origin

On November 18th, 2022, Chinese Bilibili^[1] user 乙人教动画 (B teaches animation) posted an animation that featured a gopher or groundhog character with cornrows or dreads and received roughly 53,000 likes in one year (shown below, left).

About a year later, on November 14th, 2023, Chinese Bilibili^[2] user 乙人教动画 (B teaches animation) posted another animation featuring the same gopher character who was harassing a frog character. The video received roughly 43,000 likes in six days (shown below, right).

Spread

On November 16th, 2023, TikToker^[3]^[4] @10254446zgw reposted both animations, gaining roughly 983,500 plays and 250,900 plays, respectively, over four days.

On November 18th, 2023, TikToker^[5]^[6] @10254446zgw reposted the animations again but included side-by-side comparisons between the animations and their original movie scenes, allegedly from the film series A Better Tomorrow in accordance with comments left on the videos. The first TikTok^[5] received roughly 343,800 plays and 48,700 likes in two days (shown below, left). The second TikTok^[6] gained roughly 770,500 plays and 77,600 likes in two days (shown below, right).

On November 17th, 2023, X^[7] user @DamielBernaldo reposted one of @10254446zgw's TikToks,^[3] gaining over 20.2 million views and 27,000 likes in three days.

Viral quote retweets of the post soon surfaced, such as a QRT from X^[8] user @DBloxkzTrinidad on November 19th, which followed the same concept as This Probably Funny AF, gaining 63,000 likes in a day (shown below, left). Also on November 19th, X^[9] user @kofixj9 joked, "How im feeling off the don julio," gaining roughly 9,900 likes in a day (shown below, right).

On November 19th, 2023, X^[10] user @pyongyangfang reposted another @10254446zgw TikTok,^[6] gaining over 7,500 likes in a day. The post gained its own viral QRTs^[11] in the days that followed.

English-dubbed versions of the scene also trended in late 2023, such as a tweet shared by X^[12] user @KmaFr_ on November 29th, 2023, who said, "this is the first i’ve heard it dubbed, mf was spitting real shi and we all laughed at him💔," gaining roughly 11,000 likes in five days (shown below).

New Chinese Beaver Video

On March 19th, 2024, B teaches animation posted a new animation with the beaver character to Bilibili.^[13] The scene also included a new monkey character. Over two months, the video received over 25,000 likes (YouTube^[14] upload shown below).

The animation is based on a scene called "Tell Lao Mo, I want to eat fish" from the Chinese TV series The Knockout^[15] filmed in 2023 (YouTube^[16] upload shown below).

On May 11th, 2024, X^[17] user @ascinhiding posted the clip, writing, "the budget went up wtf 😭," receiving over 84,000 likes in two days (shown below).