命运的齿轮开始转动
The gears of fate begin to turn
命运的齿轮开始转动……The gears of fate begin to turn…
命运的齿轮开始转动 means “the gears of fate begin to turn”. It is a narrator’s line for the moment a life changes, and people now use it for small, silly turning points too.
- Took off
- 2023
- Started in
- A Douyin video template
- Today
- Now everyday Chinese
What it means
The line goes before a turning point in a story: the day someone took a job, met a person or missed a bus. Said about a cup of coffee or a lottery ticket, it is a joke.
Some people turn it around: 命运的齿轮开始瞎转, “the gears of fate start turning at random”.
How people use it
The video template is less fresh now, but the line is still a common joke. People use it for the start of anything: a new job, a first date, a new hobby.
你怎么开始学做饭了？
Since when do you cook?上周买了一口锅
I bought a pot last week.然后呢？
And then?命运的齿轮开始转动
The gears of fate began to turn.那先请我吃一顿吧
Then cook me a meal first.
More examples
我下楼买了一张彩票，命运的齿轮开始转动。
I went downstairs and bought a lottery ticket. The gears of fate begin to turn.
那天他第一次走进健身房，命运的齿轮开始转动……
That day he walked into a gym for the first time. The gears of fate began to turn…
Where it came from
The words are older than the meme, and nobody agrees where they first appeared. A long article on TapTap traced similar lines to Japanese anime, manga and games from around 1999. Other articles point to the tarot card the Wheel of Fortune.
The meme came in summer 2023 as a Douyin video template. A video shows a person’s hard early days, often in one old photo, then the person today, with this line as the caption. A July 2023 article counted 3 billion views of the topic on Douyin. Companies used the template to tell their own histories.
In December 2023 the national language monitoring center put it on its list of the ten top internet phrases of the year.
The original. A video template: an old photo of someone before success, then the same person today, with the line as a caption over slow music. A TapTap article from August 2023 describes it. TapTap (in Chinese)
Related memes
Sources
- Pedaily, July 2023 (in Chinese) (news.pedaily.cn)
- TapTap: where the line came from, August 2023 (in Chinese) (taptap.cn)
- The Paper: the ten internet phrases of 2023 (in Chinese) (thepaper.cn)
Checked November 2026. The picture at the top is our own drawing of 灯灯. It is not the original meme image.
Ten Chinese memes
One Chinese internet meme every three days for a month: where it came from, what it means and how to use it.
