技能五子棋jì néng wǔ zǐ qí

五子棋 is gomoku, five-in-a-row: two players put black and white stones on a grid, and the first to get five in a line wins. 技能 means “skill”, like the special moves in a video game.

In the sketch, plain gomoku is too boring, so the players add skills with grand names, such as 飞沙走石, “flying sand and rolling stones”, and 力拔山兮, “strength to pull up mountains”. They shout them out with flat faces and dance in a stiff, robot-like way.

It is current. People sing the song, copy the stiff dance, and swap 五子棋 for other words. The Paper found versions with 谷子 (anime merchandise), 演唱会 (concerts) and 动画片 (cartoons). A “skill” version of anything is the ordinary thing with silly extra moves.

It is a sketch by the comedy duo 外星从, 张兴朝 and 李嘉诚, with the actor 张呈 as the straight man. It ran in autumn 2025 on the second season of 喜人奇妙夜, a sketch comedy show on Tencent Video. The Beijing News reports that the piece took two years to get right.

张兴朝 wrote the song a year before the show. 36Kr reports that he called it an AI composition he tried after a few drinks. The sketch ends on it, with the cast singing and dancing.

The song became background music for many Douyin videos. Pop singers covered it, and 张艺兴 performed it at a concert in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium, according to The Beijing News.

Not everyone laughed. The live audience gave it low scores, The Paper reported. Online, people liked it for its lack of logic and story.