If you've been online the past month, you might have noticed a viral video showing what appears to be a beaver or some other animal dramatically speaking in Chinese. If you're confused, you're not alone.
The clip has been circulating online for quite some time now, showing a bandaged, animated character giving an emotional speech in Cantonese. The clip is based on John Woo's seminal 1986 Hong Kong action movie A Better Tomorrow. As pointed out by Know Your Meme, the video was first shared on the Chinese social media platform Bilibili in Nov. 2022 by B Teaches Animation. It was later posted to TikTok, where English-speaking users were perplexed by the clip.
As seen below, the original version of the A Better Tomorrow scene was faithfully recreated in the animation.
As for what's being said in the clip, the scene showed Chow Yun-fat's character Mark Lee pleading with Ti Lung's character Sung Tse Ho to take action amid the escalating triad violence. The character has lost his power in the Hong Kong criminal underworld and is sick of being tread on, emotionally calling for something to be done after narrowly escaping a vicious beating. Since the clip has gained popularity, there's been an English dubbed version of it circulating online, too, which is close to the spirit of the original subtitled translation.
"I have my own principles, and I don't want to be stepped on all my life," says the animated character in the clip. "You think I'm some lowly street vendor? I've been waiting for three years, just for a chance. I have to prove myself, not to show off, to reclaim what's mine."
Another video showing the same animated character re-enacting a different scene, in which he also happens to be harassing a frog character, has also started to circulate on social media. This one isn't taken from a movie but a Chinese TV series, Conquer, which is virtually unknown outside of mainland China.
Check out some of the reactions to the meme below.
