Peppa Pig, the UK cartoon character whose memes were banned from social media platforms by Beijing last year, is experiencing a huge boost to its popularity in China after the runaway success of a trailer released to promote a Peppa Pig film.

By Tuesday, the trailer’s Mandarin hashtag #WhatisPeppa had been viewed more than 1.45bn times on popular microblogging platform Sina Weibo and the official video had garnered hundreds of millions of views across various streaming platforms.

The short video, co-produced by Canadian media group Entertainment One and China’s Alibaba Pictures, is a feel-good tale that centres on an elderly sheep farmer who embarks on a haphazard quest to find out what Peppa is, after his city-dwelling grandson asks for the pig as a new year’s gift, so that he can make one.