[Video] Dear You: How grassroots authenticity wins over Chinese filmgoers

Dear You is a film that tells a deeply personal story about loyalty, obligation and emotional bonds. It traces the narrative of qiaopi (侨批), overseas remittances and correspondence sent home by early Chinese emigrants who journeyed to East Asia. 

Before this film, director Lan Hongchun had already made two Chaoshan dialect films, along with the documentary Flavours of Teochew from the Four Seas. Over several years, he and his team carried out in-depth field research around the world. They visited around 300 households, interviewed over 120 Teochew elders aged over 80. They met illiterate grandmothers who could still recite decades-old letters word for word from memory. As a result, over 90% of Dear You is meticulously adapted from real life accounts of the Chaoshan diaspora — down to details like old ticket prices, tricycle plates and street textures. The dozens of letters that structure the film’s narrative were also built from hundreds of archival originals. This authenticity extends to the story itself: from migrants sending money home to rescue kidnapped children, to families rebuilding homes lost in fires, and even the crackdowns on Chinese-language tutoring schools, all reflecting the volatile social climate of the time.

Casting followed the same ethos. While it was not intentional to exclude established celebrities, his insistence on finding young actors who can speak fluently in Teochew and other requirements meant that he must be open to non-professional cast. To find the female lead, 20-year-old university student Li Sitong, the production team reviewed over a thousand candidates before finding her on Douyin. The other female lead, Wang Xiaohui, was a full-time working professional, while the male lead, Wang Yantong, was actually unemployed. In a modern twist to traditional casting methods, the director used the MBTI personality framework to match actors to roles. Though young and largely inexperienced, their raw, unpolished emotional delivery lent the film a rare authenticity that deeply resonated with audiences.

For some, the story felt especially close to home. The 84-year-old local resident Wu Shaoqing, who portrays the elderly grandmother Ye Shurou, had never acted before. However, her own brother had boarded a ship decades ago to seek a living in Southeast Asia and she had spent her youth waiting for those qiaopi. On screen, she is not so much acting as reliving her past.

The production also secured the participation of the acclaimed Thai actress Usha Seamkhum — celebrated globally for her breakout role in the 2024 film How to Make a Million Before Grandma Dies. Drawn to the sheer sincerity of the narrative, she readily agreed to portray the elderly Xie Nanzhi upon reading the script outline and started learning Chinese.

Working with a modest budget, Lan “used a hundred different ways to film everything he wanted”. A close look at the end credits reveals that many of the film’s sponsors were local food and beverage chains, largely unknown outside the Chaoshan region. One local beverage shop made it onto the silver screen simply by donating 100 cups of drinks. Their motivation was simple: to support fellow Chaoshan people. This shoestring budget meant the crew had to think on their feet. Props were borrowed from local villagers, monitors replaced with tablets, and makeshift camera dollies made using a tricycle. The Thailand shoot was completed by a small team with just two cameras and a gimbal. At one point, they even resorted to capturing footage on the director’s old iPhone.

Yet what the film lacked in capital, it made up for in community solidarity. Leaders of The TioChew Association of Thailand delivered cameo appearances completely free of charge. Background extras were made up of local residents volunteering their time. Some filming locations were secured through personal connections for free.

With an average ticket price of just 34 RMB, which is the lowest among the year’s top ten grossing films, it means over 40 million people showed up. Every ticket was a vote of confidence in the film’s sincerity. For the investors, it’s a commercial triumph, with a projected staggering 50-times return on investment.

Beyond its commercial performance, Dear You has also sparked broader conversations. Its focus on overseas Chinese identity and connections to ancestral roots has been interpreted in different ways. For some, it resonates as a cultural story about memory and belonging. For others, it is viewed through a more political lens. These differing readings reflect how context, perspective and intent shape the way the film is understood.

So a larger question emerges: to what extent can cultural identity be separated from national/political identity?

The film has also been part of ongoing conversations about the state of China’s film industry. For some time, some industry figures have claimed that Chinese cinema is in decline, that audiences no longer go to cinema, or that viewers have become too “difficult”. But Dear You proves otherwise. Director Lan Hongchun has repeatedly emphasised in interviews that he wanted to make a simple, old-fashioned film, something that resonates with audiences. Audiences, in turn, have called it a “slow-cooked” film, a rare and quietly healing portrayal of ordinary lives. Its restrained pacing avoids overt sentimentality, yet its emotional impact lingers.

Chinese audiences have made it clear. It’s not that they have stopped watching films — they’ve just stopped watching formulaic ones.

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