Dear You: China’s Nanyang dream and Singapore’s lived reality

While visiting a classmate’s company in Harbin, I was unexpectedly asked: why are Singaporeans reacting so strongly to the film Dear You?

I was taken aback. “Really?” I asked. “No one in my Singapore circle seems to be talking about it. Is it really that big a story? ” Or is it just being overhyped in China? I’ve always found the way Chinese people interpret Singapore rather puzzling. Frankly, I’ve stopped bothering to respond.

Romanced narrative versus strained reality

They patiently walked me through the plot. It was a Nanyang story about overseas Chinese — the diaspora, homesickness, letters from home and the longing for one’s homeland. They said it was deeply moving, speaking with genuine excitement and emotion.

I replied, “Those are the stories we grew up with. We’ve been immersed in them since childhood. How many films and TV dramas have we made around exactly these themes? Were you ever this excited about those?”

There is also a Nanyang story in my family, though it is nothing like the romanticised version in the film. If my mother were still alive, she would have given a very different, far more real account of events. Her feelings towards qiaopi (I didn’t even know this term existed until recently) were extremely complicated. I still vaguely remember how upset she would be after quarrelling with my father over qiaopi (侨批, overseas remittances and correspondence sent home by early Chinese emigrants).

My grandfather was among the early migrants who went to Nanyang to earn a living. When my father was 11, my grandfather brought him to Singapore, leaving my grandmother and aunt behind in their hometown. Starting from scratch, he struggled his way out of poverty, weathering financial hardship, racial unrest and the turbulence of a rough-and-tumble society where all kinds of people rubbed shoulders. After many ups and downs, he managed to build a small business. It took years of painstaking effort before life gradually began to improve.

Cultural roots and national identity

But the relatives back in our hometown would send letters every so often, demanding all kinds of things, from Hero brand fountain pens and bicycles to refrigerators and televisions, and even requests to repair the old house or build a new one. There were four of us siblings in the family at the time, all still in primary or secondary school.

My mother believed my aunt’s demands knew no bounds. She was forever asking for more. My father had paid for her university education, and even after she married a Teochew man and had two children, the requests kept coming. He never turned her down, believing he owed her for the years she had spent caring for his ageing mother back home.

My mother was the one who resented it most. She scrimped and saved every day, while we children didn’t even have a bicycle of our own. Yet she still had to go through my uncle in Hong Kong to order goods and have them sent back to our hometown. Even then, our relatives back home were picky about brands, specifying exactly which ones they wanted.

My classmates were shocked to learn this. “How can the perspective be so different?” they asked. Well, yes. The film is beautiful — reality, far less so.

Later, the conversation turned to United Front work. The more I listened, the more uncomfortable I became. Finally, I said, “I’m ethnically Chinese, but I’m not Chinese.” It wasn’t a rejection of my cultural roots, but an affirmation of my identity and who I am.

If my parents were still alive, I am sure they would be most grateful not to anyone in some distant homeland, but to Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, because it was this country that transformed their lives. It was here that they raised their children and gained stability and dignity.

Where home truly lies

After my grandmother passed away, my parents rarely returned to Hainan. I accompanied them on a few visits to their hometown, but none left much of an impression on me. I also travelled with them to the Great Wall, and to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou and Qingdao. Yet after a week or two on every trip, they would start saying they wanted to “go home”. To them, home was Singapore.

That afternoon, I decided to see for myself the Nanyang migration film that had caused such a sensation in China. To be honest, I was deeply moved as well. It reminded me that love can be so pure and beautiful, and that love at first sight can indeed last a lifetime. Xie Nanzhi’s chance encounter with a familiar face in a foreign land gave that love story a beautiful continuation.

What moved me most, however, was the unspoken bond between the two grandmothers — kindred spirits who understood each other without words. Their final conversation was at once heartbreaking and deeply fulfilling. I found myself fighting back tears.

History has never been a single narrative. In Nanyang, every family has its own grandmother’s story. If the director is ever interested, he could always make a film about the qiaopi story of two grandmothers like my mother and my aunt.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “阿嬷的故事”.

Related: [Video] Dear You: How grassroots authenticity wins over Chinese filmgoers | The truth behind Dear You, from a first-generation Nanyang migrant