Sun Tao (second from right) and his production team at the filming set of Chopsticks. [Photo provided to China Daily]

He explains at a family gathering during childhood, when he was the first at the table to reach out to grab some food with his chopsticks, he got a slap on the hand from his mother-a rebuke for attempting to take food before the elders at the table.

The scene is reproduced in the ad and became one of its most heartfelt moments.

"One of the biggest challenges we had during the production was with the characters, as 90 percent of them are not professional actors, but real people playing themselves. However as a result, what we have on screen is natural, vital and real," says Sun.

With a budget of 2 million yuan ($288,000), and produced over the course of three months, the five-minute ad was edited from around 500 hours of footage.

"Basically, we have tried to use the chopsticks as a needle to stitch together all the fond memories of love and family," says Sun.

Comments under the ad on Sina Weibo have tagged it as "healing" and "an accurate interpretation of Chinese culture".

The D&G video, which was supposed to promote the brand's big fashion show in Shanghai on Nov 21, sparked a huge backlash on Chinese social media for being offensive. Things got worse for the fashion label after the brand's co-founder, Stefano Gabbana, allegedly made disparaging remarks about the country and people while supposedly defending the advert on Instagram, further escalating tension between the brand and its Chinese customers.

The fallout saw the brand's offerings pulled from the listings of a number of Chinese e-commerce platforms, including Tmall and JD, while a galaxy of A-list Chinese stars, including Li Bingbing and Chen Kun, who were expected to attend the Shanghai show announced their absence from the event.

As a result, the show, titled The Great Show, and which promised the exhibition of hundreds of outfits and the attendance of 1,500 guests, was canceled hours before it was scheduled.

In a video shared on the brand's official Sina Weibo account shortly afterward, the two founders and designers personally apologized to "Chinese people around the world" in Mandarin.