《亲爱的你》电影

Dear You, the Movie

My father migrated to Singapore 3 years after WW II, and he arranged for my mother to join him in 1951. My mother lost my only sister during pregnancy before giving birth to me in 1956. My brother was born two years later. My father passed away when I was eight. I had few memories of the time I spent with my late father. It was my late mother who brought up the two of us with hard work and perseverance. She passed away a year after I married Mona. Mona did learn to cook Hainanese dishes from her, including Hainanese chicken rice!

I have many precious memories of the time spent with my mum. We were poor, and she had to do two jobs a day as a kitchen helper, washing glasses and plates, to keep us afloat. But she seldom complained to me. The occasions when I saw her look anxious were infrequent. These occasions were always associated with sending money, clothes, and medicine back to her relatives in Wenchang, Hainan. She told me that a particular relative in Wenchang was always pestering her for money and goods. More importantly, I distinctly remember that she had to get one particular Hainanese person to write a letter to accompany the goods. My mother was illiterate and spoke only Hainanese! It is indeed a miracle that she managed to bring up two sons on her own steam in a foreign land!

‘Dear You’ (给阿嬷的情书) was a low-budget movie (14 million yuan), written and directed by Lan Hongchun, and shot in the Chaoshan (Teochew) dialect. It featured a cast of largely unknown and non-professional actors, which adds to the film's authenticity. It was released on 30 April 2026 with limited screenings, but through massive word-of-mouth recommendations, it soon topped the daily box office charts, peaking at a phenomenal 48% share of screenings. The film’s cumulative box office in China surged past 1.9 billion yuan by June 2026! It also received unprecedented critical acclaim! On the major Chinese film review and rating platform, Douban, it achieved a rare score of 9.3/10.0, marking it as one of the highest-rated domestic films in recent years.

The movie traces the journey of a young man, Xiaowei, burdened by family debt, who secretly travels to Thailand to find his estranged grandfather, Zheng Musheng, rumored to be wealthy. He soon discovers the shocking truth that his grandfather had passed away a long time ago. The romantic letters his grandmother had been receiving for 18 years were from Xie Nanzhi, a Thai-Chinese woman of Chaoshan descent, who ran a hostel for Chaoshan migrants in Bangkok's Chinatown with her father. Her life was intertwined with Zheng Musheng when he stayed at her hostel while working in Thailand. Zheng saved her father from a fire and was later tragically killed. Xie began writing these letters for Zheng when he was briefly imprisoned. After his accidental death, she decided to continue this act permanently. Firstly, Xie wanted to shield Zheng’s wife, Ye Shurou, from the devastating news. Secondly, she felt a profound sense of responsibility to keep Ye’s hope alive and to support her family, which included three children. The letters were accompanied by money for living expenses, presents for important family milestones, and children’s schooling expenses.

The movie unveils a hidden story of sacrifice, of loyalty, and of promise kept faithfully, despite the distance of space, time, and kin, which resonated strongly with the audience, especially the Chinese diaspora. It opened in Singapore on June 18, 2026, and became the highest-grossing Asian film for 2026 in the Singapore box office. The first eight screenings in the Teochew dialect sold out in just 90 minutes. The distributor submitted requests for additional screenings, eventually leading to 172 approved Teochew-dialect screenings. Singapore has a long-standing policy that encouraged Singaporean Chinese to use Mandarin instead of their ancestral dialects. The public's passion for the Teochew-dialect version was so strong that it nudged the Singapore government to adopt a more "flexible approach" toward the screening of Chinese dialect films, acknowledging them as an important part of the nation's cultural heritage.

At the heart of this movie is the tradition of ‘qiaopi’ (侨批) – letters that were sent home along with money by overseas Chinese migrants back to their families. It was a unique combination of a personal letter and a financial remittance. For many families in villages across southern China, receiving a qiaopi was a lifeline! However, the true power of ‘qiaopi’ lies in the personal stories the letters carry. Its profound historical and cultural value was formally recognized in June 2013 when the Qiaopi Project was officially inscribed on UNESCO's "Memory of the World" Register. Archives and universities have since worked to preserve these documents. For instance, Shantou University Library has a digital database with information and images of about 30,000 pieces of ‘qiaopi’, ensuring these voices from the past are not forgotten.

The twist in the tale was that the ‘qiaopi’ was written by a third party! I now understand why my mother was so anxious whenever she had to send home a ‘qiaopi’, not only because we were poor and could not afford to send much but also because it was prone to misunderstandings!

There is also a Hainanese twist to the tale: In the 1930s and 40s, many Hainanese migrants, like my parents, were illiterate. Some of them used ingredients like local glutinous millet, fresh coconut, and eggs to bake thin wafers, which they then folded into the shape of an envelope. These were sent home with returning relatives as a way of saying that “to see the biscuit is to see the sender; to receive it is to know that all is well” (见饼如面，见信平安). Every family had a slightly different recipe—different sweetness, different coconut flavor. When a family back home tasted the biscuit, they knew exactly who it was from!