{"id":80625,"date":"2026-07-02T10:25:51","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T02:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80625"},"modified":"2026-07-02T10:25:51","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T02:25:51","slug":"dear-you-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80625","title":{"rendered":"Dear You (2026)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I first heard about this film from the news about it being a surprise sleeper hit in China and decided to watch it as it is about the history of Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia. Arriving in the cinema, I saw that plenty of other Malaysian Chinese had the same idea and this is a huge hit in Singapore as well. It’s overly long, heavy-handed in its sentimentality and glosses over the reasons for so many migrants leaving China. But it’s well-made enough to be a tear-jerker, its predominant use of Teochew lends it authencity and to us Southeast Asians, it feels like acknowledgement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In modern China, Ye Shurou is an old woman who has raised three children on her own, her husband Zheng Musheng having left for work to Southeast Asia decades ago and never returned, having presumably started a new family there. One of her grandsons Xiaowei is heavily indebted and reasons that his grandfather must have struck it rich in Thailand as many schools have been established in his name. He travels to Bangkok behind Shuruo’s back to meet with the Thai relatives to claim a share of the inheritance. Upon arrival, he gets into touch with the local Teochew community but discovers that Zheng Musheng had passed away in 1960. Yet somehow his grandmother continued to receive letters and money from him until 1978. He eventually manages to meet the son of Xie Nanzhi, the woman presumed to be his grandfather’s second wife in Thailand. From there, he learns the story of his grandfather’s life as migrant and his relationship with Nanzhi, who was the daughter of the landlord of the boarding house that hosted many such migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This does cross the line into being sentimental pap at times as it cannot resist piling on the feels. Portions of Musheng’s story are believable but it’s like he is the idealized summation of all of the migrants smushed into a single archetype. He is perfectly loyal, hardworking, conscientious and most of all a romantic. We already know that he is going to die early at some point so director Lan Hongchun teases us at multiple points on his exact cause of death. The conception of an eternal love that persists across decades and vast distances is an old-fashioned technique to wring tears out of the audience but it’s such a wrong way to think about love. I particularly detest how the film contrives to keep Nanzhi ‘pure’ so that she is never blamed for being the other woman. A more serious film would have dared to portray the characters as living and breathing human beings and be the better for it. Yet I cannot deny that for its target audience this works very well indeed. The plot is easy to grasp, the actors despite being non-professionals pull off their roles well, and the scenes of Bangkok in the past look authentic for all that they have to work with a limited budget. You can practically smell the dankness of the boarding house Nanzhi runs and step into the bustle of the Chinese-run parts of Bangkok. It truly is a step into the past and it’s understandable so many of the older generation flocked to experience it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The success of this film both domestically within China itself and in Southeast Asia is so fascinating. It suggests that there is a revival within China of interest in regional identities and curiosity about the fate of the migrants who left for Southeast Asia. As for us here, even for someone like me who is more of a banana than anything else, it feels like a belated acknowledgment and perhaps even a tribute to our ancestors. The long distance relationship may be fluff but the travails and experiences of the migrants are real. It is satisfying that authentic details like the qiaopi letters and even the flowery language they use are recorded for posterity. Even so, this depiction flatters the current China. The original rationale for Musheng leaving is to escape conscription in the Kuomintang’s army. It dramatizes the preciousness of the letters and the money that was included in them but fails to mention the government’s own attempts to regulate and restrict the flow. It is the very much China’s point of view and so expresses the fervent wish of all migrants to one day return home to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imperfect as it is, I enjoyed watching it in the cinema and I’m heartened that it exists. I was even disappointed that there are no scenes at all depicting Musheng’s earlier experiences in Malaya. Some brave critics in Singapore have commented that this film threatens the national identities of overseas Chinese by emphasizing their ancestral connections. It is certainly difficult to imagine anyone in Malaysia being capable of making a similar film about Malaysian Chinese that would be both fair and realistic. For now, we have this and we should be glad for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first heard about this film from the news about it being a surprise sleeper hit in China and decided to watch it as it is about the history of Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia. Arriving in the cinema, I saw that plenty of other Malaysian Chinese had the same idea and this is a … Continue reading Dear You (2026)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80625"}],"version-history":[{"count":58,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80732,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80625\/revisions\/80732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}