Snow Mountain Fox: how a duck became a story and a store visit

A brand-account video is directly available; the exact debut Xiaohongshu URL remains unverified.

Chuanwa Sauce Duck posted a related Snow Mountain Fox video on Douyin on March 9, 2026. The Hubei Daily interview says the project began as a routine Xiaohongshu update, but we do not have a stable link to that first post. This brand upload is therefore a work entry, not a claimed February 27 debut or episode one.

The maker says the team went on to make five main episodes, one extra, behind-the-scenes material and a music video. The reported 'five billion' refers to discussion and many remixes across the web, not views of this brand video or a count of buyers.

• Watch on Chuanwa Sauce Duck's account ↗

Sources for this section: Chuanwa Sauce Duck: Snow Mountain Fox related video · Hubei Daily interview with maker Ai

The four-person team changed the character, setting, food and ending so the duck became a story character.

Ai Linjunji says the team saw a predictable AI fox-repayment clip. They changed the farmer to a woodcutter, forest to snow, wild fowl to their own sauce duck, and repayment to the duck's revenge. He chose a recognisable retro wuxia look that he said the tools could generate more smoothly. The product and punchline were designed together, rather than adding a purchase message after the film was finished.

The maker also reports revising the reveal line repeatedly. The transferable decision is to define the audience expectation, what the product does in the story and how the ending breaks that expectation. The original dialogue and character treatment remain the maker's work, not a ready-made template for another brand.

Sources for this section: Hubei Daily interview with maker Ai · Yangzi Evening News interview with Ai Linjunji

The maker advises writing the whole story, then splitting it into roughly 15-second parts; no specific failed take is public.

In Hubei Daily's interview, the maker describes writing the whole story, splitting it into roughly 15-second scripts and generating segments. He says AI footage can deviate and needs repeated adjustment and selection to avoid continuity faults; he does not name a failed shot in this title. He mentions Doubao for script breakdown and generation tools for visuals, but no shot-by-shot prompts or version files are public. He told Yangzi Evening News that episode one took about five hours from idea to release. This is the four-person team's recollection, not a reproducible labour or cost record.

We can watch finished footage and read the maker's general selection method, but cannot compare this film's rejected clips against repaired cuts. The reports do not identify a shot that failed in character, prop, motion or continuity terms, so a supposedly successful prompt comparison would be invented.

Sources for this section: Hubei Daily interview with maker Ai · Yangzi Evening News interview with Ai Linjunji · Chuanwa Sauce Duck: Snow Mountain Fox related video

Audience remixes expanded the story and contributed to the original series' pause.

The team told Hubei Daily that viewers took the premise beyond its own ideas, yet it finished five main episodes and an extra. On April 1, Ai told Yangzi Evening News that the original series had stopped: production time and cost were rising, and the team doubted it could top audience remixes. It began another AI short series. The pause is a problem of sustaining quality and ideas, not evidence that video generation itself failed.

A small trial would decide which characters, visual rules and product facts must persist, then use real response to one episode to judge the next investment. That is BitShovel's inference from the case, not the team's recipe for a hit.

Sources for this section: Hubei Daily interview with maker Ai · Yangzi Evening News interview with Ai Linjunji

March 26 has Tmall and promoted-product measures; April 1 has an online-store gain without a defined baseline.

In the March 26 Hubei Daily interview, the maker said duck sales at the company's Tmall flagship store were up 10%–15% month on month. Later in the same report he said sales of the duck he promoted had risen by more than 20%. The second statement gives no platform, comparison period or overlap with Tmall, so it is not another distinct block of incremental sales.

On April 1, Ai told Yangzi Evening News that recent 'online-store sales' were up 70%–75%, without identifying the store, comparison period or exact products. All three figures are maker statements recorded by reporters. We have no independent orders, media spend, returns, inventory, labour or full production ledger, and no control test that separates the videos from other causes. His claim that the whole series cost a little over RMB 1,000 also lacks an itemised scope. None of this permits an incremental-revenue or profit calculation.

• Check the March 26 Hubei Daily interview ↗
• Check the April 2 Yangzi Evening News article ↗

Sources for this section: Hubei Daily interview with maker Ai · Yangzi Evening News interview with Ai Linjunji