我看不懂，但我大受震撼wǒ kàn bu dǒng, dàn wǒ dà shòu zhèn hàn

大受震撼 is “deeply shaken” or “struck”. The line admits two things at once: you did not follow, and it hit you anyway. It is close to the older 不明觉厉, “I don’t understand, but it sounds impressive”.

Online it is often ironic. People use it for a confusing art show, a strange gadget or a post they cannot make sense of.

It is still common, for anything from a modern art exhibit to a math lecture. It is friendly and a little self-mocking: you admit you are lost and give credit anyway.

The line goes back to the film director Ang Lee. In Trespassing Bergman, a 2013 documentary about the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, Lee talks about the first art film he saw, Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, and how strongly it hit him. Chinese viewers summed up his words as 我看不懂，但我大受震撼, and screenshots of the scene became stickers. Sources differ on whether the line is his exact words or a summary of them.

In December 2021, China’s national language monitoring center put it on its list of the ten internet phrases of the year.