我命由我不由天wǒ mìng yóu wǒ bù yóu tiān

命 is “fate”, 由 means “to be decided by”, and 天 here is heaven, the way things are supposed to go. The line says: nobody else decides how my life turns out.

It sounds grand, so people often use it for small fights: a hard exam, a diet, a lottery ticket. The bigger the words and the smaller the problem, the funnier it is.

It is a classic. You hear it before exams and matches, in captions about a comeback, and as a joke about small acts of rebellion, such as a second dessert. Said about yourself, it is a pep talk with a wink.

The film 哪吒之魔童降世, released in English as Ne Zha, opened in mainland cinemas on July 26, 2019. It was directed by 饺子 (Jiaozi) and retells the old story of 哪吒: a boy born from a demon pearl, who is told he will be struck down by heaven at the age of three.

At the climax, Ne Zha holds up a mountain of ice to save his town and shouts the line, as The Paper’s 2019 review describes. The film took more than 2 billion yuan in its first ten days, and about 5 billion yuan in mainland China in the end. The line went everywhere with it.