LayarHijau – Chinese animated film Niu Lai (《牛來》) has become one of the year’s most unexpected box office stories. Despite being mocked online for its rough visuals and clunky animation, the film, made almost entirely by a mother-and-son duo, has turned things around and grossed more than 24 million yuan, or over US$3.4 million.
What makes Niu Lai even more remarkable is the tiny team behind it. The 86-minute animated film was created by director Xin Yumeng and his mother, Sun Lifang, neither of whom had any previous experience in film production.
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The mother and son spent around five years bringing the project to life. Xin Yumeng handled almost every technical aspect of the production, including modeling, rigging, lighting, rendering, editing and voice acting. Sun Lifang, meanwhile, taught herself screenwriting from scratch, voiced all of the female characters and worked on the film’s music.
Xin Yumeng, who was born in Dalian in 1992, previously worked in landscape design, interior and exterior renovation, and building information modeling. After watching numerous animated films in 2021, he became interested in making a film of his own.
He subsequently changed the name of his company, which had previously focused on decoration and construction, to reflect its new focus on culture, film and television. By the end of 2021, Niu Lai had also completed the film registration process.
But moving from landscape design into animation proved far more difficult than he had expected. Xin Yumeng explained that landscape design is largely about thinking on a macro level and planning spaces, while animation requires painstaking attention to individual frames and the emotions conveyed through them.
“Although they are both forms of design, making that transition could be very painful at times,” Xin Yumeng said when discussing his move into filmmaking.
With very little money to work with, the entire production had to be done using whatever equipment he could afford. Xin Yumeng bought second-hand computers to work on the film, and one of them eventually suffered a hardware failure after being pushed too hard. The motherboard burned out, further delaying production.
For five years, Xin Yumeng worked without an outsourced production team or outside investors. He handled modeling, rigging, lighting, rendering and editing himself, while also taking on voice work.
His lack of experience meant that the production involved plenty of trial and error. However, there was one advantage to doing almost everything himself: reworking a scene did not mean having to pay additional labor costs.
Those limitations are clearly visible in the finished film. Niu Lai has been criticized for technical problems including characters and objects passing through one another, choppy movement and rough image quality.
Xin Yumeng, however, has never tried to hide those shortcomings. Instead, he believes finishing the film and getting the story told was more important than endlessly pursuing perfect visuals.
“People don’t go to the cinema with a microscope to inspect every strand of hair. If I spent all my energy on rendering precision, this film would never have been finished,” Xin Yumeng said.
“Between getting every detail right and keeping the overall story moving, I chose to let the story run first,” he added.
Niu Lai was also made entirely without the use of AI. Xin Yumeng said all 86 minutes of animation were created manually, with keyframes produced frame by frame.
He explained that when production began, AI technology had not developed to the level it has today. Even when ChatGPT emerged in late 2022, the technology was still far from mature enough to be used in the way it is today.
Amid all those limitations, Sun Lifang played an equally important role in bringing Niu Lai to the screen. She previously worked for a state-owned enterprise and had no experience in film production.
Nevertheless, she taught herself how to write a screenplay and voiced every female character in the film. She also taught herself music and composed the score for Niu Lai.
Sun Lifang additionally wrote, composed and performed the film’s closing song, Rain After the Storm (《雨後清風有香》).
Xin Yumeng has said he was deeply impressed by his mother’s musical abilities. In fact, he feels she was much better at conveying emotion through music than he was.
“I can basically make melodies, but I’m not very good at putting emotion into them,” Xin Yumeng said.
He was particularly moved by the emotions his mother brought to the music, which he felt expressed her hopes for the future and her expectations for the next generation.
Working together for five years did not mean the mother and son always saw eye to eye. Xin Yumeng admitted that disagreements were a regular part of the production process.
“We fought, argued and even slammed the table. That happened quite often,” he said.
Still, whenever they disagreed, Xin Yumeng usually ended up listening to his mother. He considers himself relatively inexperienced in life, while his mother has had far more life experience.
Interestingly, Xin Yumeng himself had little confidence in Niu Lai’s box office prospects before its release. The film had virtually no promotional budget and received very little conventional marketing.
In an interview conducted just four days before the film opened, he admitted that he had no idea how it would perform.
“Being able to release the film was already something worth celebrating. But once it came out, I had no idea how the market would respond or what the final box office would look like,” Xin Yumeng said.
His pessimism turned out to be misplaced. Niu Lai initially struggled at the box office, but its fortunes changed after clips from the film began spreading rapidly online.
The rough visuals that had initially become a source of ridicule instead turned into one of the film’s biggest draws. Curiosity prompted more viewers to head to cinemas and see for themselves what had become one of the internet’s biggest talking points.
As interest grew, screenings increased and so did the film’s box office. As of August 19, Niu Lai had grossed more than 24 million yuan, equivalent to over US$3.4 million.
After the film went viral, Xin Yumeng also responded to the wave of criticism surrounding it.
“There are still many rough and imperfect parts in Niu Lai. I read every criticism carefully, one by one,” he wrote.
“I’m grateful for all the praise, and I accept all the doubts,” he added.
The film’s unexpected popularity is now beginning to create opportunities beyond mainland China. In Hong Kong, there has been discussion about a possible theatrical release after Broadway Cinematheque responded to an online inquiry by saying that the matter was being discussed.
Attention has also reached Singapore. A poster recently circulated online claiming that Niu Lai would open in Singapore on September 1, 2026.
That information, however, turned out to be false. The poster was fake, and there has been no official announcement confirming a Singapore release date for the film.
The rumor was not entirely baseless, though. A local Singapore distributor is reportedly considering bringing Niu Lai to the country.
Meanwhile, Xin Yumeng was already thinking about his next project even before Niu Lai hit theaters. He revealed that work had already begun on a sequel titled Yang Gao (《羊高》).
He plans to keep the next project independently produced and does not intend to accept outside investment. At the same time, Xin Yumeng has made it clear that he would not recommend other filmmakers follow the same extreme path he and his mother took.
After five years of work with second-hand computers, no large production team and plenty of criticism over its visuals, Niu Lai has nevertheless become an unexpected box office phenomenon. What began as a little-noticed independent animation has now generated more than US$3.4 million and started attracting interest from markets outside China.
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