Something almost surreal has happened in the Chinese film industry recently.
An animated film called Niulai was made by a mother and her son, who quietly worked on it for five full years. The film has received official approval for theatrical release, secured overseas distribution, and is scheduled to open first in Singapore on September 1. As of now, its actual cumulative box office has surpassed RMB 25 million. It has not yet crossed the 100-million-yuan mark, but current projections suggest it could potentially approach RMB 135 million, with public interest continuing to build.
In an industry where film budgets routinely run into hundreds of millions of yuan, this sounds almost like a dream.
I haven’t even seen the film in a theater myself. But as soon as I heard about what was happening, I sent the news to a circle of friends who work in film and television—screenwriters, directors, producers, and other industry professionals—and asked them: “This is unbelievable. What do you make of it?”
There was no single answer. But every perspective was worth hearing.
One friend hadn’t watched the entire film. He had only heard some of its music, yet it had already made an impression on him. His view was that the film was technically rough, even crude in places, but that it had something inside it.
Many big-budget films are polished and dazzling on the surface, yet once you peel away the packaging, there is very little underneath. Niulai seems to be the opposite. Its production resources were limited, but the force inside the work is enormous.
Two people spent five years on it. Who could endure that kind of commitment without having something they desperately wanted to express?
The technical limitations were simply a result of circumstances. But the passion is impossible to hide.
The songs in particular seem to carry that quality. The lyrics are simple, the melodies uncomplicated—somewhat reminiscent of the simplicity of You and Me, the song associated with the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Nothing elaborate, yet somehow deeply moving.
“Maybe the fact that it exists is reason enough,” my friend said.
Another friend joked that he hadn’t seen the film yet, so all he could say was: “This era is truly crazy. Maybe if something exists, there must be a reason for it.”
Another friend took a step back from the film itself and talked about the audience.
After all, cinemas are places of mass entertainment. When audiences voluntarily embrace something, there is something larger happening underneath: ordinary people are exercising their right to choose for themselves.
So often, what we watch is effectively chosen for us by capital, marketing budgets, advertising campaigns, and an enormous promotional machine. But this time, the audience seems to have taken that choice back.
There have been similar social phenomena before.
For years, the diamond industry successfully persuaded people that diamonds were an essential symbol of romantic love. But imagine a day when people collectively decided that the pull tab from a soda can could represent genuine affection just as well.
The diamond itself has not changed. It is still simply a hard stone.
What gives an object its value is people.
The same may be true of artistic authority.
Young people constantly invent new words and expressions. To an older generation, some of them may sound like grammatical mistakes or nonsense. But they are also a generation creating its own language.
The disagreement between generations—the incomprehension, the arguments, even the rejection—is itself part of the process of expression.
One friend told me that his apartment complex was undergoing plumbing renovations. His home was a complete mess, and he simply couldn’t find the time to go to the cinema. He was content to watch the phenomenon from a distance after hearing about the film’s astonishing box office.
Another friend joked that he wasn’t planning to see it at all.
And one final friend offered only four words: “Let a hundred flowers bloom.”
A circle of people working in the arts, and everyone sees something different.
Some see perseverance and passion.
Some see the emotions of the audience.
Some prefer to wait and watch.
Ideally, of course, we would all like to see genuine diversity in the arts: billion-yuan commercial blockbusters, niche auteur films, and works created by ordinary people should all have an equal opportunity to reach audiences.
But anyone working inside the industry knows that reality is far from ideal.
There are censorship requirements. There are the practical barriers of theatrical scheduling. There is the filtering power of capital. There are countless objective constraints.
True artistic diversity is therefore extremely difficult.
And yet Niulai has created a rare opening.
It was not built by a major studio or assembled through enormous capital. It came from ordinary people. It received official theatrical approval. And, remarkably, the market embraced it.
That does not mean that artistic diversity has suddenly arrived.
What it does prove is something more modest—and perhaps more important:
Even in an environment full of limitations, an unconventional work can still break through the soil.
For me, the most extraordinary thing about Niulai is those five years of persistence.
Many audiences entering theaters are reportedly doing so partly out of curiosity. Some laugh throughout the screening, treating the film almost as an absurd spectacle.
But regardless of why people bought their tickets, the objective result remains astonishing: the film has created a box-office phenomenon that almost nobody expected.
There have certainly been low-budget films that became unexpected hits before.
But it is difficult to think of many cases where the gap between the resources invested and the eventual public response has been this dramatic.
And this is where the story becomes particularly interesting.
Traditional filmmaking spends enormous amounts of money on marketing and promotion simply to persuade audiences to do one thing: get up, leave home, and sit in a movie theater.
Everyone in the industry knows how difficult that is.
Niulai, however, spent essentially nothing on traditional promotion.
When it first opened, almost nobody knew it existed. During its first ten days, its box office was reportedly only a little over RMB 7,000, with extremely limited theatrical screenings.
Then clips from the film began circulating online.
People posted them, mocked them, joked about them, and shared them. Those fragments triggered a wave of spontaneous online discussion and secondary distribution.
Suddenly, the heat exploded. The audience itself became the marketing department. People willingly paid for tickets and walked into theaters. In a sense, many were not simply buying the film.
They were buying a ticket to participate in a public conversation.
They were buying a chance to have a voice.
They were joining a collective, offline celebration that had been created organically by the audience itself.
That may be the strangest and most fascinating part of the entire phenomenon.
Why did it happen?
Honestly, I am still trying to figure it out. Timing, circumstances, human behavior, luck—somehow, everything collided at exactly the right moment. It feels like a miracle.
We have seen so many films backed by enormous investments and armies of highly skilled professionals. Every detail can be technically impeccable, and yet the final box office can still be disappointing. Then along comes a film made by just two people, with extremely limited resources, somehow breaking through into international distribution. Its success may be almost impossible to reproduce. Perhaps that is precisely why it is so fascinating.
Niulai is an officially approved theatrical film, yet it has challenged almost every assumption we carry about what a movie is supposed to look like. A good film does not necessarily have to come from major capital or a massive production team.
Technology can be improved.
Equipment can be purchased.
Production values can be refined.
But the desire to express something from deep within oneself—and the willingness to spend five years pursuing that expression—cannot simply be bought.
There is a certain toughness in that. Perhaps that is where the real power lies. Art should have room for billion-dollar commercial spectacles. But it should also leave a small window open for ordinary people who simply have something they desperately want to say. This time, Niulai was extraordinarily lucky. It found that window. And somehow, it squeezed itself through.