Dear You

Released 2026. Director: Hongchun Lan

EARLIER IN THE YEAR, AN INDEPENDENT PRODUCTION with a largely non-professional cast became an unexpected hit in its homeland China. International distribution set off a wave of reactions in overseas Chinese communities not only across Asia, but in Europe and North America. Families flocked to see the movie, bringing their aged grandparents. Social media lit up, energised by the enthusiasm of the young, some are third or fourth generation born outside China. Dear You is a phenomenon that connects the Chinese diaspora and now that I've finally seen it, I understand why it hit so hard especially for those from Southeast Asia.

In the early 20^th century, China was a nation gripped by political turmoil and economic hardship. Times were tough and many young men made the decision to chance their luck in the south sea. They sailed in boats and hoped to find work where they landed, with the dream of sending money home to their wives and families, maybe one day return a rich man to motherland or bring their wives over to start a new life. If they made it past rough seas, disease and death, their survival in an unfamiliar country would depend entirely on their hard work and self-reliance.

Dear You begins in present day as a search for answers about a grandfather in Thailand. Debt-ridden, Xiaowei leaves China to find the grandpa he's never met, with no more than the old man's name. The last time 88-year-old grandma Shurou heard from her husband was some 60 years ago when a photo arrived showing her husband with a woman and a few kids. Heartbroken after waiting for years, Shurou accepted that her husband has remarried and started a new family. She raised their three young children by herself, the stash of 396 letters from her unfaithful husband hidden in a wooden chest. The resourceful Xiaowei has found out that there were schools in Thailand named after his grandpa and assumes he must have become successful and wealthy. He believes his birthright entitles him to claim his share of the riches.

The movie starts off in a semi-comical tone, with the character of Xiaowei portrayed as a boorish fortune seeker. As his search leads him deeper into his grandpa's past, the movie slowly and adeptly morphs into an affecting drama, ultimately building to a moving finale. Moments of melodrama and mawkish sentiments are offset by the compelling historical and emotional inspection of a silent generation that birthed the vibrant overseas Chinese communities today.

The story of grandpa Mu Sheng is recalled from memories of those who still remember the brash young man who changed their lives. Grandma recalls him as the poor farm boy who stole her heart as they eloped with big dreams for their future. Mu Sheng's journey to seek a better life led him to Malaysia, where he escaped his British colonialist employer after a scuffle and landed in Thailand. As a tenacious rickshaw puller, Mu Sheng lives a spartan and frugal life saving every cent to send home to his sweetheart. Mu Sheng is a fearless survivor with no time for niceties, but his deep sense of justice compels him to stand up against bullies and help those who's down or threatened.

Mu Sheng is also a champion for childhood education, helping to set up free classes with a teacher friend for migrant kids in his Chinatown neighbourhood to learn their mother tongue. Like many of his compatriots, Mu Sheng never learned to read and write but as an adult now, he appreciates the importance of basic education. His early efforts leads to schools named after him decades later, as his grandson Xiaowei would discover. It's the movie's acknowledgement of the emphasis placed by early migrant Chinese society on education, building schools and funding scholarships for local children.

The flashback to Mu Sheng is vivid and captivating, the storytelling is direct and unabashedly calculated to hit every emotional high note, but also incredibly effective and when the movie slows to its quiet final act, the contrast only enriches the closure that promises to leave no dry eye in the house.

The main portion of the movie is about Mu Sheng's eventful years, the highs and lows, joys and tragedies, new friendships and abiding love for his distant wife. The happiest time for Mu Sheng is when he sits at the desk of a professional scribe who turns his prosaic expressions like “I miss you” and “wish you were here” into lines of lyrical devotion and poetic avowal to sail across the sea on thin parchment paper.

Millions of letters sent by men like Mu Sheng over the decades kept and cherished by families have now been accorded a historical significance. As the movie notes at the end, these remittance letters known as qiaopi between 1864 and 1980 have been classified in 2013 as part of UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The hard-earned money sent with these letters had helped not only the immediate families, but on a wider scale, in saving lives during the famine, civil war and revolutions that fractured much of China in the early to mid 20^th century. Curiously, “Dear You” is a strangely mistranslated English title from the Chinese title “Love Letters to Grandma”, which is endlessly more fitting and expressive.

In all his letters Mu Sheng has concealed harsh truths from his wife. He doesn't mention the struggles, the fights, being wrongly jailed or the fire at the hostel that reduced his savings to ashes. Sadly, he also doesn't get to explain the photo with the woman and kids. For years Shurou receives letters, money and gifts from her beloved Mu Sheng. A surprise turn in the plot reveals that the person she's been corresponding with in the latter years is not her husband. Behind this secret is an immense act of generosity and sacrifice, a parallel story which I should refrain from revealing here for you to discover yourself if you haven't seen the movie.

Dear You, written by Leng Yang, Xuanxuan Zheng, Liyun Zhu and director Hongchun Lan, takes its inspiration from a shared element in the heritage of the massive Chinese migrant exodus. While the story focuses on the specificities of a Teochew-speaking clan from the Chaoshan region, the story contains enough general elements to be characteristic of the common migrant experience whether they spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Hainanese or another linguistic variant. Whether they had ended up in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore or Indonesia, descendants of these men feel a strand of historical and psychological connection to this grounded human drama that's fictional yet wholly believable as a slice of someone's family history. It's no wonder the movie has resonated with audiences across generations.

I don't know if my own grandparents had similar correspondence. I imagine they must have. No letters have remained and I know little about their history other than they managed, separately and years apart, to sail from southern China to Malaysia before World War II. It's something they never talked about, those stoic men of silence who kept their past to themselves. We never asked when we were younger. Now the chance is long gone; and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren have sailed even further and made homes on four continents.

A movie like Dear You, notwithstanding its improbably awkward title, reminds us that our fore-fathers, possessed of little more than guts and smarts, pushed themselves through risks and hazards to build a future for their families in a foreign land. They would be amazed, and I hope comforted, to see where their descendants have landed and made of themselves today.

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