How Chee! (The Viral Great Buffet of China TV Commercial)

How Chee! (The Viral Great Buffet of China TV Commercial) / Canada / 2026 / Dir: Craig Silliphant

From 1996 to 1998, a low-budget television commercial for The Great Buffet of China aired relentlessly in Saskatoon. Featuring a Caucasian pitchman introducing a Chinese phrase, “How Chee,” and a group of painfully amateur young actors enthusiastically repeating it, the ad became infamous. Some laughed. Some cringed. Some hated it with a passion. Many considered it the worst commercial of all time. Thirty years later, the commercial continues to resurface (even going viral in China) and sparking new conversations about cultural representation, marketing, and media memory.

How Chee! explores the unlikely origins of the ad, including the friendship between an immigrant restaurant owner with a failing business and the university professor who set out to help him save it. The film also revisits the now-adult actors who found themselves locally famous long before going viral was a thing. The film examines how the commercial shaped their lives in ways both hilarious and complicated. Blending humour, nostalgia, and cultural reflection, How Chee! looks at fame, marketing, friendship, and what happens when something seemingly small becomes part of a city’s collective lore.

There will be a Q&A after the film with several of the cast and filmmakers, hosted by CTV’s Jeff Rogstad.