Global Times: Writer Chen Jiming on qiaopi culture, Home Letter, and the shared emotional roots behind hit film Dear You’s 650M yuan run.
Beijing, CHINA, May 30, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — At the end of 2023, long before movie Dear You became one of the most talked-about Chinese films in recent years, director Lan Hongchun arrived on Guishan island in South China’s Guangdong Province with his team to meet writer Chen Jiming, whose novel Home Letter traces Chaoshan culture and qiaopi, the handwritten letters and remittances sent home by overseas Chinese migrants.
At the time, Lan’s film project was still taking shape. There was no script, no fixed storyline, only a direction he could not yet fully define.
Lan had already read Home Letter and came up with the idea of shooting a film on a similar subject, so he sought Chen’s advice in the early stages of the project.
They first watched Lan’s two previous Chaoshan-language films before turning to a discussion that also included Home Letter.
Both of them agreed that qiaopi is an important subject worthy of further exploration. Their discussions also touched on Chaoshan, a cultural and linguistic region in southeastern Guangdong known for its strong migration traditions.
Something in those exchanges later became part of the emotional foundation of Dear You.
Three years later, the film quietly arrived. Made on a modest budget and without major stars, Dear You has since become a cultural phenomenon. It has grossed more than 650 million yuan ($95 million) and earned a 9.1 out of 10 rating on the Chinese movie review platform Douban.
For Chen, whose novel Home Letter helped bring the history of qiaopi to the broader public, what struck him most was not only the film’s success, but the way a once-niche cultural subject has entered mainstream emotional space.
In an interview with the Global Times, Chen returned to the ideas that had shaped his writing of Home Letter. At the center of it was a belief that Chaoshan culture cannot be contained by geography alone.
“To write about Chaoshan people is, in a sense, to write about Chinese people. The qualities that are deeply rooted in the Chinese character,” he said.
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