Ten years have passed since the curtain rose on Ocean Heaven, the first Chinese film to tell the story of autistic patients and their families.

Directed by Xue Xiaolu and starring Jet Li, Zhang Wen and Gwei Lun Mei, the movie continues to score extremely high ratings on numerous websites.

On the review platform Douban, some 50 percent of moviegoers gave the film a four-star rating, while 25 percent said it merited five stars. On mtime, a popular movie discussion website, nearly 300 of 5,769 respondents gave the film 10 points out of 10.

However, the movie has only earned 14.02 million yuan ($2.13 million) at the box office, a near-record low for Li, the lead actor. In comparison, Tangshan Earthquake, which was screened one month after Ocean Heaven, has recorded ticket sales of 649 million yuan.

According to one popular comment on Sina Weibo, "Everyone who watches Ocean Heaven likes it, but the problem is that not enough people have decided to go and see it."

Sun Zhongkai, head of the Beijing Stars and Rain Education Institute for Autism, which helps autistic patients and their families, said there is a major problem in sharing knowledge about the developmental disorder with the public. Although there are a growing number of reports about autism and its patients, accounts that lack "standout points" rarely attract much attention.

Online reports about autism nearly always include links that guide the reader to stories or videos tying the disorder to examples of genius.