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As you’ve probably heard by now, Here Comes the Cow (牛来), or just Niu Lai, is a new animated film which opened in Chinese cinemas on August 5. There was no trailer or publicity around its launch, just a single mysterious digital image.
That poster portrays a traditional ink-wash scene, in which a cow stands alone amid mist and mountains, with elegant calligraphed text:
“The cow will come on August 5th.”
牛来。
8月5日，终将抵达。
Early viewers, possibly drawn in by the beautiful classical imagery, found themselves watching a poorly made 3D animation.
They were subjected to 82 minutes of crude modelling, juddering characters, subtitles full of errors, and a hard-to-follow story line about a calf entering a dream world who learns how to take responsibility.
In its first nine days, the film took 7,169 yuan nationwide, roughly a thousand US dollars, from just 236 viewers. The handful of people who saw it were blunt about the disconnect between the poster and the movie:
“The poster promises a cinematic masterpiece like A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains.
But the film resembles a cheap Flash browser game on 4399.”
海报千里江山图，正片4399小游戏。
This is a contrast any Chinese person would get: A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains is a celebrated landscape scroll painted during the Northern Song in the twelfth century. And 4399 is one of China’s earliest free gaming sites launched in 2004.
Other comments compared the production to paper effigies burned as offerings to the dead, saying:
“The paper cows burned at gravesides look better than this.”
上坟烧的牛都比这个建模好。
But then the film began to draw attention from finance bloggers.
They noticed the title could be interpreted as “the bull market is coming” (牛市终将到来). So they joked that with a name as auspicious as that, investors had a duty to watch it.
As the joke spread, people started digging into the film further, thinking perhaps the plot held a hidden message about China’s next much-anticipated bull market.
That turned out to be a dead end, though. Because the film was made by just two people: a 34-year-old man named Xin Yumeng (信雨萌), who directed it, and his mother, Sun Lifang (孙丽芳), who wrote the script and even sung the outro music.
Related
The pair had been working on it for five years with no team, no outside investment, and no experience or expertise in film making. Their production company based in Dalian had been an interior decorating firm with a single employee until 2021. And the film’s distributor had reportedly had urged Xin not to release it at all.
As that background surfaced, thousands more started buying tickets to go and see the movie, precisely because it was so bad:
“The audience cycles between hating on it and feeling bad for it.
Now they only need two words to promote this film: absurdly bad.”
一边骂，一边心软；一边心软，一边继续骂。现在宣传只需要四个字：烂得离谱。
Tickets sold out across cinemas with audiences applauding when the two-name credit roll appeared at the end, marking when the awful movie was finally over. Sarcastic five-star reviews began flooding Douban (豆瓣). One, for examples, says:
“Everyone else blindly backed Ne Zha and hyped up The Eight Immortals.
But Here Comes the Cow is my personal favourite.”
当你们选择无脑支持《哪吒》，盲目跟风《八仙》的时候，而我却独爱《牛来》。
Joke posters for the movie began appearing online, photoshopping the Niu Lai cow into artwork of other hit summer blockbusters, creating unusual combinations like:
Spider-Cow (蜘蛛牛) instead of Spiderman
Cowdyssey (牛德赛) riffing on the The Odyssey
Some industry pundits see the film's success as a problem for Chinese cinema, using the phrase "bad money drives out good" (劣币驱逐良币). This is borrowed from Gresham's Law, the economic principle that cheap currency pushes out sound currency from circulation. Applied here, it's the fear that this low-budget, badly made movie will drown out high quality films.
But a rival internet coinage has recently taken hold: “bad money drives out counterfeit cash” (劣币驱逐假币), where Niu Lai is the poor quality “bad money” (劣币). And the “counterfeit money” (假币) means big-budget releases which turn out to be hollow. Audiences, it seems, would rather have a film which is “sincerely awful” (烂得真诚) rather than one dressed up as something it isn’t.
Another reason why it’s taken off in China is because AI software, such as Seedance 2.0, can generate smoother, sharper animation in minutes. But Xin and his mum decided to “handcraft it from scratch” (手搓) over five years.
This collective appreciation for “a terrible movie” (烂片) has become a cultural phenomenon. Niu Lai is now a destination, or a “check-in spot” (打卡点) — one of those must-go places to take a selfie just to prove you’ve been there.
Which is why some are describing the response as “collective performance art” (集体行为艺术): thousands of cinema-goers are taking part in something together, “appreciating ugliness” (审丑), and laughing for 82 minutes of awful film making while forgetting about the pressures of work and life.
So that’s what we’re exploring this week!
💡Recommended: the outstanding writer, Manya Koetse, goes deep on all the social reasons why Niu Lai went viral in her Eye on Digital China newsletter. This is a “hand-crafted” (手搓), must-consume long read! Read it here!
Favourite Five
1. 手搓 shǒu cuō
handcraft, make something from scratch
AI盛行的时代，还有这种水平的人坚持手搓，勇气可嘉 - In an era dominated by AI, it takes real guts for someone less skilled to stick to handcrafting everything from scratch. [2]
Note: a current and “hot” internet slang.
Related:
画质 huàzhì - image quality
2. 杀疯了 shā fēng le
go absolutely wild, be insanely good
《牛来》这片子真的杀疯了 - The movie “Here Comes the Cow” is absolutely killing it. [1]
Note: another common internet slang at the moment.
3. 猎奇 liè qí
seek out the strange or unusual, curiosity about the bizarre
不少观众抱着猎奇心态买票打卡 - Plenty of moviegoers grabbed tickets out of curiosity just to say they saw it. [2]
Related:
魔幻 mó huàn – surreal, absurd
4. 参与感 cān yù gǎn
sense of participation, feeling involved
今天，一部分年轻人买电影票，是购买：参与感 - These days, when some young people buy a movie ticket, what they’re really buying is a sense of belonging. [4]
5. 反其道而行 fǎn qí dào ér xíng
go against the usual approach, do the opposite
在国产动画疯狂追求特效、IP、神话宇宙时，《牛来》反其道而行 - While Chinese animated films are going all out on special effects, big-name characters, and mythic universes, Here Comes the Cow bucks the trend. [4]
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Consuming the Conversation
Useful words
6. 反讽 fǎn fěng
irony, sarcastic mockery
豆瓣上大量反讽式五星好评刷屏 - Large numbers of sarcastic five-star reviews flooded Douban. [1]
Related:
嘲笑 cháo xiào – mock, ridicule
群嘲 qún cháo – collective mockery, be collectively ridiculed
7. 高低 gāo dī
by any means, one way or another
这么“烂”的吗？我高低得去看看 - Is it really that bad? Then I really have to see it for myself. [3]
Note: a northern dialect term
8. 扎堆 zhā duī
cluster together, flock together
暑期档大片扎堆，每一块银幕都是稀缺资源 - The summer lineup is packed with blockbusters, which turns every screen into a highly contested territory. [1]
9. 槽点 cáo diǎn
a flaw or absurdity that begs to be roasted
市场如果奖励的不是品质而是槽点，那最终所有人都会受损 - If the market rewards cringeworthy flaws rather than quality, everyone will ultimately suffer. [1]
Related:
群嘲 qún cháo - mass mockery
槽点满满 cáo diǎn mǎn mǎn - full of things to mock
槽多无口 cáo duō wú kǒu - lost for words as so many things wrong with it
10. 笨拙 bèn zhuō
clumsy, awkward
这件事的荒诞之处在于——技术越先进，观众反而越珍惜“笨拙” - The absurdity of this is that the more advanced the technology becomes, the more audiences cherish “clumsiness”. [1]
Note: 拙 is also pronounced as zhuó in daily speech
Related:
粗糙 cū cāo – rough, crude
11. 审丑 shěn chǒu
appreciate ugliness, seek out the ugly
靠猎奇、靠审丑、靠“烂到出圈”来获取票房，这条路走不长 - Relying on gimmickry, trash aesthetics, and viral cringe to drive the box office is simply unsustainable. [1]
12. 围观 wéi guān
watch as a bystander, watch the spectacle
上映9天票房仅7169元被群嘲，却意外引爆全民猎奇围观 - Mocked for bringing in a miserable 7,169 yuan in nine days, the film unexpectedly became a viral spectacle. [2]
