BANGKOK (AP) \u2014 The buzziest film in China this year was shot almost entirely in a southern Chinese dialect that most Chinese viewers need subtitles to understand.<\/p>\n
Yet \u201cDear You\u201d has become China\u2019s second-highest-grossing film of the year. Now it is heading overseas, part of a broader wave of Chinese cultural exports.<\/p>\n
\u201cDear You\u201d was shot mostly in Teochew, a dialect spoken in Guangdong\u2019s Shantou region. Set among the Teochew immigrant community in Bangkok, it tells the story of people who left China in search of work to support their families. Made on a low budget, it features a cast of mostly unknown actors.<\/p>\n
The film provides a glimpse into the centuries-long history of Chinese migration to Southeast Asia. It has succeeded in making this little-discussed history visible to a wider audience, threading the fine needle of passing official censorship requirements, experts say, while telling a compelling story. <\/p>\n
As of August, the movie had grossed about 269 million yuan ($40 million) at the Chinese box office. It was released in Thailand in early August after being shown in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. It will be released in the U.S. next month.<\/p>\n
China is increasing its soft power with cultural exports<\/p>\n
The film\u2019s popularity comes as Chinese culture and consumer brands have been gaining global cachet \u2014 from collectible Labubu dolls<\/a> to \u201cChinamaxxing,\u201d<\/a> a social media trend of embracing aspects of the Chinese lifestyle. <\/p>\n The Chinese government began promoting the film as it became a hit and prepared for its international release. <\/p>\n The Chinese consul in Sydney said at a June screening of the film that it \u201creflects the Chinese nation\u2019s virtues of diligence, kindness, courage and unity.\u201d<\/p>\n The movie aligns with Beijing\u2019s broader goal of \u201ctelling China\u2019s stories well,\u201d highlighting themes of friendship, tradition and family, including motherhood and kinship, said Belinda He, an assistant professor of East Asian cinema and media studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.<\/p>\n China\u2019s ambassador to Thailand presented the film at a special screening in July and again at a red carpet event this month.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re grateful to Guangdong for making such a wonderful film,\u201d Chinese ambassador Zhang Jiangwei said at the red carpet event, which was attended by officials from Guangdong\u2019s Information Office. \u201cStories about ordinary people and simple, genuine emotions can be even more moving. This film is an excellent vehicle for telling China\u2019s story well.\u201d<\/p>\n Chinese migration to Southeast Asia has been ongoing for centuries<\/p>\n The film first resonated in Malaysia and Singapore because it showcases a history that\u2019s rarely featured in mainstream films. <\/p>\n Chinese migration to Southeast Asia dates back centuries, with many migrants coming from the Guangdong and Fujian provinces in southern China. Many worked as laborers in building projects in an era of Western colonial rule across much of Asia.<\/p>\n The film starts with a young man trying to find his grandfather, Deng Musheng, in hopes of getting a loan to repay his debts. In the family lore, there was supposedly a wealthy grandfather in Thailand, who left his young wife and children behind in China and never came back.<\/p>\n Using an address on an old remittance letter his grandfather had sent, he meets people who became part of his grandfather\u2019s life in Bangkok, uncovering the mystery of why his grandfather never returned. <\/p>\n The film\u2019s director, Lan Hongchun, wrote in a column for the People\u2019s Daily, a state media outlet, that he grew up hearing stories from his grandmother about people she knew migrating to Bangkok, and wanted to tell these stories in film.<\/p>\n The film also resonates with Thai Chinese viewers<\/p>\n The plot revolves around \u201cqiaopi,\u201d remittance letters used by Chinese immigrants to send money and news back home. Many workers who could not write Chinese relied on scribes to compose the letters.<\/p>\n Scenes set in the centralized offices where the scribes worked, called \u201cpoy kuan,\u201d were directly out of the childhood of 74-year-old Sathien Tuntipaiboontana. <\/p>\n \u201cI connected emotionally with that part of the film quite strongly,\u201d he said after watching the first screening of the film in a Bangkok theater with his older sisters and sisters-in-law. Among them was his eldest sister, who is 89 and needed help climbing the stairs to the cinema.<\/p>\n Their father had immigrated to Bangkok from China in search of work, leaving behind a wife and children. He ended up remarrying and never returned to China. But Sathien\u2019s family continued to send remittances to the family left behind in China.<\/p>\n Thitikorn Phanprayoon, a third-generation Thai Chinese, said he decided to see the film after hearing Teochew, the Chinese dialect he speaks at home, in the trailer. It surprised him since most Chinese films are in Mandarin. He plans to return with his parents.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like I was sitting at home,\u201d he said. \u201cIt felt like my family was performing in the movie in front of me.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP writer Fu Ting contributed to this story from Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BANGKOK (AP) \u2014 The buzziest film in China this year was shot almost entirely in a southern Chinese…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1631,12624,269595,1657,18261,146,122,85,46,231469,397,126],"class_list":["post-596116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-asia-pacific","tag-bangkok","tag-belinda-he","tag-china","tag-china-government","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lan-hongchun","tag-movies","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}