In 2021, writer-director and actress Jia Ling's debut film "Hello, Li Huanying" was a box office hit with 5.413 billion yuan, becoming the highest-grossing film during the Lunar New Year and the third highest-grossing film in Chinese cinema history.
Jia Ling invested 380 million NDT and earned 14 times more thanks to a film with the theme of motherly love. According to experts, Jia Ling's debut work had artistic shortcomings, but won over the audience thanks to its closeness, sincerity, and simplicity.
"Hello, Li Huan Ying" is based on a short story of the same name first published by Jia Ling in 2016. The story is about Jia Xiao Ling (played by Jia Ling) - a girl who suddenly time-travels from 2001 to 1981, after her mother has a traffic accident.
Here, Hieu Linh meets her mother again when she was a young girl (played by Truong Tieu Phi). She decides to help her mother become happy, change her fate to have a happier life.
Notably, the story was adapted from Jia Ling’s own personal experience. In 2001, Jia Ling, 19 years old, was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama, but just one month after enrolling, her mother, Li Huanying, suddenly passed away while carrying hay with her husband. She did not have time to see her mother one last time.
When her mother had an accident and was lying in a hospital bed, Jia Xiaoling blamed herself: “I have been your daughter all my life, but I have never done anything to make you happy, even once.” So when she had the chance to go back to the past, a year before she was born, Xiaoling tried to do many things to make her mother happy, finding her a good husband, regardless of the fact that she might not be born.
In 1981, Xiao Ling helped her mother buy her first TV, encouraged her to join a volleyball match, and gave her the opportunity to meet the son of the factory director, Shen Guanglin. Xiao Ling also envisioned that her mother would have a son who was more talented and successful than her, who would study abroad and work at a job with a salary of 80,000 yuan.
The time travel scenario of "Hello, Li Huan Ying" is not new. But it surprised the audience at the end, it turned out that the person who returned to the past was not only Jia Xiao Ling but also her mother.
The work brought tears to the audience from this turning point. Hieu Linh always thought she understood the difficulties her mother had gone through, she thought she had tried her best to change her mother's life. In the end, Hieu Linh realized that, regardless of time and space, her mother's love and devotion to her was still much greater than her devotion to her mother. Ly Hoan Anh never regretted her life choices.
What Hieu Linh could not realize was that her mother always considered her a "treasure". Ly Hoan Anh said that her child did not need to study well or be rich, she only needed him to live healthy and happy.
On Douban, a short comment received tens of thousands of likes: “You think you love your mother very much, but she loves you more than you think.”
Someone once asked Jia Ling why the English title of the movie is "Hi, Mom" but the Chinese title is "Hello, Li Huanying". She replied, "Mom is not just mom, mom is also yourself".
In the film, this message is mentioned in the touching line: "When I had memories, my mother was in the form of a middle-aged woman. So I forgot, she was also once an innocent, dreamy young girl."
Jia Ling said in an interview that she hopes the word "mother" is just a title and not a limitation. She hopes all mothers in the world are happy and can do whatever they want.
