Watch “Niu Lai” Indie Film: China’s So-Bad-It’s-Good Animated Hit (SF)
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tiat | 151 Powell St. San Francisco
Event Details
Lets watch Niu Lai together <3
Niu Lai (Chinese: 牛来; pinyin: Niú Lái; literally “Here Comes the Cow” or “The Bull is Coming”) is a viral 2026 Chinese animated indie film that became a massive “so bad, it’s good” box office sleeper hit.
⭑.ᐟ More on Niu Lai
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Niu Lai is an 86-minute abstract adventure following a timid newborn calf who grows into a braver ox through a dream-like journey alongside his mother and other forest animals.
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It was made over a five-year period by a mother-and-son duo, director Xin Yumeng and writer/composer Sun Lifang, who handled the script, animation, voice acting, and soundtrack almost entirely by themselves.
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Created on a tiny budget (reported around $200 to a few thousand yuan) using basic architectural modeling and design software like SketchUp on secondhand hardware.
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After opening to almost no audience and earning just a few thousand yuan in its first week, clips of its stiff, glitchy, and surreal computer-generated imagery spread across Chinese social media.
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Online ridicule turned into genuine curiosity and cult-classic status, driving audiences to theaters en masse and pushing its gross past $9 million (making it one of the most profitable films relative to its budget). Audiences often contrasted its earnest, human-made charm with slick, AI-generated content.
⭑.ᐟ Chinamaxxing
A group exhibition on view 9/25 – 10/17 at TIAT in SF ⭑.ᐟ
Drink hot water. Learn the characters. Buy the robot dog. Imagine the future happening somewhere else.
Earlier this year, “Chinamaxxing” emerged online as a playful embrace of contemporary China—its technology, infrastructure, food, fashion, and everyday life. But what, exactly, are you embracing—a culture, an aesthetic, a political possibility, a different version of yourself?
Across sculpture, moving image, poetry, performance, and interactive systems, Chinamaxxing follows objects, technologies, and rituals as they travel across borders. The artists explore what gets translated, imitated, misunderstood, or made intimate along the way.
The exhibition asks what we want from China, and what we might discover beyond wanting.
⭑.ᐟ More on TIAT
tiat is the intersection of art & technology! we are an experimental gallery for creative technologists to experiment, exhibit, and expand their practice. ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ tiat is 501c3 nonprofit, our EIN is: 39-3448606.
Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.
Cost: FREE*
