The title Dear You, originally A Love Letter to Grandma, reveals little about what the movie is really about. It could easily be mistaken for a romance. Instead, the modest budget Chinese production has become one of Southeast Asia's biggest surprise hits, drawing audiences with a story that reaches far beyond its budget of less than US$2 million (RM8.15 million).
Many viewers left the cinema in tears. One 87-year-old in the audience turned to his daughter after the credits rolled and asked why the film was so short. She told him it had already been two hours.
The emotional response is not hard to understand. For overseas Chinese communities across the region, Dear You is less a film than a window into the past.
One of the reasons the movie has struck a chord is its faithful portrayal of diaspora communities across Southeast Asia. Although these communities have developed differently over generations, they continue to share many traditions, customs and values.
Most Malaysian Chinese are descendants of southern Chinese immigrants who arrived between the early 19th and mid-20th centuries, the majority originating from Fujian or the Lingnan region, which encompasses modern-day Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan.
The founding of the British settlement in Penang in 1786 and Singapore in 1819 also triggered mass emigration from China to the Malay Peninsula.
Later waves came to work the tin mines and rubber plantations, settling into communities defined by dialect. Hokkien became dominant in Penang and along much of the west coast, while Teochew communities spread across Seberang Perai, Kedah and Johor.
Hakka settlers were concentrated in the peninsula's mining towns and, most distinctively, in Sabah, where they remain the majority Chinese dialect group to this day. A long-established Hakka settlement also exists in Kelantan. Cantonese communities, meanwhile, became concentrated in the urban centres of the Klang Valley.
The Teochew dialect, spoken throughout much of the movie, is one of the strongest reminders of a shared heritage that is gradually disappearing among younger generations. That many younger viewers today require subtitles to follow the dialogue their grandparents once spoke at home gives the film an additional, unspoken layer of loss.
The Teochew people trace their roots to Chaozhou in eastern Guangdong, a region so defined by its proximity to the sea that its very name means “Tide State” in Chinese.
From these coastal origins, Teochew communities spread across Southeast Asia, with many settling in Thailand, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. Thailand has the largest Teochew community outside China. Their far-reaching presence is encapsulated in the old Teochew saying, “Wherever there is shade, sit,” which roughly translates to “go wherever there is opportunity.”
The story draws on the history of qiaopi, a network through which overseas Chinese sent letters and money to relatives in China long before modern banking became commonplace. These pioneering migrants established a private mail delivery system whereby money was sent by mail together with family letters to their home villages in China.
In the early days, migrants would entrust the responsibility of carrying their letters and money to individuals known as shuike (water guests) — traders and agents who travelled frequently between Southeast Asia and China, sometimes delivering remittances directly to recipients’ families, sometimes converting the money into goods to sell upon arrival and passing on the proceeds.
Over time, the qiaopi delivery business evolved into specialised remittance firms, with letters usually containing a specific amount of remittance along with instructions on how the money should be used and distributed. The men entrusted to hand-deliver the letters and money to families in China were known as phoe-kha — literally, “letters’ feet.”
The women who stayed at home shouldered many heavy burdens such as supporting parents, educating children and maintaining family relationships, and the letters reflect the roles they played in managing daily income and expenditure, housing, marriages, funerals and loan repayments.
For many families, the qiaopi were their only link with loved ones left behind, carrying remittances, news, reassurance and hope from across the ocean. The system began around 1860 and ended in 1979, when the Bank of China took over the handling of overseas remittances.
The idea for Dear You came from screenwriter, director and producer Lan Hongchun and collaborator Yang Leng. Lan's earlier documentary work on overseas Chinese communities took him to Southeast Asia, Europe and North America, where he interviewed hundreds of families.
Many shared stories of migration, separation and the qiaopi system, providing the inspiration for the film. The screenplay was later adapted into a novel by Zhu Liyun, helping to secure investment from Zheng Xuanxuan before the movie went into production.
The casting process was as unconventional as the film itself and most of the cast had little or no acting experience. Lan even used the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator as one of his casting tools, believing that actors whose personalities were closer to their characters would deliver more natural performances.
To find the right people, he auditioned more than 1,000 actors. From the outset, he had decided both female leads should be INFJ, a personality type associated with deep empathy and quiet resilience.
When the two women finally chosen for the roles turned out to both be INFJ, Lan called it a happy coincidence. He has since been careful to add that MBTI was only a reference tool, and that the final decision always came down to the audition itself.
Although the main characters and storyline are fictional, many of the movie's details were drawn from the real experiences of elderly overseas Chinese, from the language spoken at home to the traditions, food and family relationships, recreating a world that many older viewers will recognise from their own childhoods.
Teochew speakers might notice another nuance. Rather than relying on a single standard accent, the movie preserves the distinct speech of different parts of the Chaoshan region, including Chaoyang, Jieyang and Shantou, also known as Swatow.
Yet when the credits roll, Dear You is no longer really about the overseas Chinese experience or the qiaopi system. They simply provide the backdrop for a story about two women whose lives remained connected for decades without ever meeting — all because of a misunderstanding within a family in mainland China. It is a powerful and moving portrait of a bond sustained across time and distance, held together by nothing more than a letter and a name.
That story, together with the history behind it, is what stays with the audience long after they leave the cinema, especially for those who enjoyed it so much that two hours went by just too quickly.
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Carolyn Khor is an independent journalist who contributes to several print and online publications. Selected articles from her archive are published here for Newswav readers. A shorter version of this story was first published in theSun.
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