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Chinese culture
OpinionAsia Opinion
Bernard Chan
Opinion
Bernard Chan

For many outside China, Dear You reflects family history, not politics

Some call the film soft power, but for many in the Chinese diaspora, it’s simply family history

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A woman attends a screening of Dear You in Kuala Lumpur on June 15. Photo: Xinhua
Bernard Chan
Bernard Chan, born in 1965, is a Hong Kong businessman.
When a modest Chaoshan-dialect film about an indebted grandson, a missing grandfather and a bundle of yellowing remittance letters opened quietly in China in late April, few expected it to become one of the biggest films of the year. Yet Dear You has earned more than 1.8 billion yuan (US$265.75 million) at the Chinese box office. It has done so without major stars or heavy promotion – an unlikely triumph for a film told largely in Teochew or Chiu Chow.

As the film is released across Southeast Asia, however, it has also prompted reflection on how Chinese communities remember migration.

The film unfolds across generations. A young man from the Chaoshan region travels to Thailand to track down his grandmother’s long-absent husband. His search is intercut with scenes from an earlier wave of migration, when Chinese men left for Southeast Asia and mailed home qiaopi – letters enclosing money and scraps of news, apology and hope. Many of these letters are now archived in Unesco’s Memory of the World Register, but for audiences in China and Southeast Asia, they evoke memories of how families endured years apart.

That recognition gives the film its emotional force. Qiaopi were lifelines, envelopes with a few banknotes, sometimes a small token – proof that someone overseas had not forgotten.

Part of the film’s impact stems from its language. Dear You is spoken almost entirely in Teochew, the dialect of Chaoshan and some Chinese communities in Hong Kong and across Southeast Asia. With amateur actors and ordinary village backdrops, the conversations feel genuine and unvarnished.

For younger viewers raised on sleek productions, that roughness has felt personal – like listening to their grandparents or seeing their hometown streets projected onto a big screen.

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