by Xinhua writer Zhang Yunlong

BEIJING, May 13 (Xinhua) -- A low-budget, Chaoshan (Teochew)-dialect film featuring an almost entirely first-time cast has become one of China's biggest cinematic surprises of 2026.

"Dear You," directed by Lan Hongchun, a native of Shantou in south China's Guangdong Province, opened on April 30, earning less than 4 million yuan (about 585,000 U.S. dollars) on the first day, but has since gained steady traction, driven by its soaring word-of-mouth publicity.

On China's movie review platform Douban, the tear-jerker drama secured an opening rating of 9.0 out of 10, which later rose to 9.1, making it the highest-rated domestic release so far this year. Only three other Chinese films in the past decade -- "Dying to Survive (2018)," "The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru (2024)," and "Her Story (2024)" -- have opened above 9.0 on this platform.

By May 12, its total box office revenue had topped 170 million yuan. Film data platforms Maoyan and Beacon have revised its box office forecasts upward several times, from an initial 50 million yuan to projections now exceeding 700 million yuan, which if achieved, will surpass the May Day holiday top earners, namely twist-filled crime thriller "Vanishing Point," and Hong Kong-set franchise entry "Cold War 1994."

The film's path has been anything but conventional.

Rather than casting established names, Lan's team spent nine months scouring the Chaoshan-speaking regions of Guangdong for performers whose personalities fit the characters precisely.

The search spanned more than 1,000 candidates before the team settled on Li Sitong, then a 20-year-old finance student with no acting experience, for the lead role of Xie Nanzhi.

Li's first day on set happened to require one of the film's most emotionally demanding scenes, a sequence inside a historical "qiaopi" remittance office. So the director spent two days rehearsing every extra and every background detail until the space felt less like a set and more like a living, breathing period environment.

"When Li walked in, it already felt like a real place," Lan said in a social media post. "She is a naturally empathetic person. The moment she stepped into that space, she was pulled into the character's world. We wanted the emotions to emerge naturally, not be constructed."

Reflecting on his ensemble of first-time performers, Lan wrote: "They had no professional skills, but they used the simplest, most sincere emotions to bring these characters to life. I am truly grateful that they were willing to give themselves, completely, to this story and to this film."

That approach is precisely what gives the film its power, with many viewers citing the absence of trained mannerisms as central to the characters' credibility.

The story draws on the history of "qiaopi," the letters and remittances sent home by earlier generations of overseas Chinese. UNESCO, notably, added the "qiaopi" archives to its Memory of the World Register in 2013.

In the film, Zheng Musheng leaves the Chaoshan region of Guangdong during wartime and later works in Thailand, hoping to eventually return home, while his wife, Ye Shurou, remains in Guangdong raising their children. After Zheng dies overseas, Xie Nanzhi, a woman of Chaoshan descent living in Thailand who had become friends with him, chooses not to tell Ye immediately, instead continuing to send letters and money in his name. Over nearly two decades, the two women, though strangers separated by the sea, become quietly connected through correspondence and care.

The character has also prompted discussion among audiences, with Li sharing her own interpretation online.

"Xie was never someone born extraordinary," Li wrote, describing the character as initially distant and guarded, someone reluctant to open herself to others. She said a pivotal moment came in the "qiaopi" office, where Xie was moved by the endurance and longing carried in letters sent home by overseas Chinese.

On Xie's relationship with Zheng, Li said she did not see it as romantic love. "They were friends who went through hardship together," she said. "He encouraged her to learn Chinese, and saved her life and the life of her father in a fire. She spent half a lifetime honoring that profound bond."

The film's appeal has spread well beyond its regional base. About 80 percent of early box office earnings came from Guangdong, where audiences are familiar with the dialect and local culture. But as online reviews piled up, the audience broadened sharply.

Responses from moviegoers outside the film's cultural home are especially telling. "I'm a northerner and I had zero problem with the language barrier," one Douban user wrote, adding that the film left them weeping throughout. Another reviewer, who described having no overseas relatives and living far from the sea in landlocked Sichuan Province in southwest China, wrote that "watching this film was like seeing the moon rise over the ocean -- the joy and the sorrow felt entirely my own."

"This is the kind of good film that appears once every few years," wrote Yi Xiaoxing, a filmmaker, on microblogging platform Weibo, calling it "a beam of light" that emerges whenever people begin to doubt the future of cinema. "It makes you believe that a good film is both a miracle of art and a miracle of ordinary people."

Lan noted that he felt compelled to tell this story. While making a documentary about the food and lives of overseas Chinese of Chaoshan descent, he traveled extensively across Southeast Asia and beyond, gathering hundreds of family stories. "After hearing enough of those stories, 'Dear You' simply began to take shape," he said, calling the film a love letter to those ordinary yet extraordinary generations who held fast to their roots while reaching for a foothold in distant lands.

What began as a story rooted in one corner of southern China has since found an audience far beyond it, underscoring the broad appeal a deeply regional story, told with enough honesty, can achieve.