About

John Cena Speaking Chinese and Eating Ice Cream refers to a video of wrestler and actor John Cena recording a video of himself sitting in his car with an ice cream in his hand while promoting the film Fast & Furious 9. The video was parodied by YouTubers by altering the English subtitles to make it appear as though Cena was in a dire situation. Additionally, the video was shared in edits meant to emphasize the way Cena says "ice cream" (Bing Qi Lin / 冰淇淋) in Mandarin, phonetically written as "Bing Chilling."

Origin

On May 10th, 2021, John Cena made a video post to his Weibo account to promote the upcoming film Fast & Furious 9 while sitting in a car and eating ice cream.^[1] The video (shown below) shows Cena speaking in Mandarin and singing into the ice cream cone as if it were a microphone. The video also features Mandarin subtitles.

The post also included the following caption in Mandarin:

#速度与激情9#

早上好中国
现在我有冰激淋 我很喜欢冰激淋
但是《速度与激情9》比冰激淋……

🍦

English Translation:

Good morning, China.
Now I have ice cream.
I like ice cream very much,
but "Fast and Furious 9" is better than ice cream. 🍦

The phonetic transcription of the video is as follows:

Zǎoshang hǎo zhōngguó
xiànzài wǒ yǒu BING CHILLING
wǒ hěn xǐhuān BING CHILLING
dànshì sùdù yǔ jīqíng 9
bǐ BING CHILLING

On June 2nd, 2021, ProximateSineYT reposted the video to YouTube. ^[2] (shown below)

The reupload was about a week after John Cena's Apology to China.

Spread

On June 6th, 2021, YouTuber adrian translated the video to English,^[3] but had some difficulties with certain parts (shown below).

Other YouTubers helped to further translate the video to English, as well as make parodies and edits out of it. Many parodies altered the subtitles of Cena's video. For example, YouTuber Visionlessjo posted an edit that gained over 2.4 million views (shown below, left). On June 21st, YouTuber meaningless videos posted a compilation of parodies, gaining over 33,000 views (shown below, right).

On June 19th, 2021, the meme was covered by Lessons In Meme Culture (shown below).

Bing Chilling

One of the most popular aspects of the video was Cena saying "ice cream" in Chinese, which was commonly written phonetically in English as "Bing Chilling." On June 28th, 2021, YouTuber ApicalShark posted the original video with the title, "John Cena eats Bing Chilling in 1080p," gaining over 835,000 views (shown below).

YouTubers made remix memes around Cena saying "Bing Chilling." On July 26th, YouTuber Internet Things posted an upload that featured the Vine Thud whenever Cena said "Bing Chilling," gaining over 1.4 million views (shown below, left). On July 18th, YouTuber NexusChan posted a similar edit, gaining over 1 million views (shown below, right).

Bing Chilling TikTok Trend

In November 2022, John Cena's script went viral on TikTok after a series of creators began making videos delivering the dialogue in near-perfect Mandarin. On November 14th, TikToker^[4] @giapaoohehe posted a video that gathered over 4 million plays and 300,000 likes in nearly four days (seen below left). On November 13th, TikToker^[5] @alfallis posted a video saying the dialogue as well, gathering over 13 million plays and 2.7 million likes in nearly three days (seen below, right).

The trend soon grew popular, with various creators making videos repeating the phrase, oftentimes mimicking Cena's particular pronunciation rather than an authentic Mandarin tone. Other creators discussed how Cena's videos inadvertently altered the way they speak Mandarin as their native language.

On November 17th, 2022, TikToker^[6] @rat.ri0t posted a screen recording of the trend taking over their "For You" page, gathering over 2.6 million views and 600,000 likes in a day (seen below, left). Also on November 17th, 2022, TikToker^[7] @yispamm posted a video talking about how Cena's video has ruined his pronunciation of Mandarin, gathering over 1.6 million plays and over 300,000 likes in a day (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External Links