by Xinhua writer Zhang Yunlong

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- A low-budget, Chaoshan (Teochew)-dialect film featuring an almost entirely first-time cast has continued its remarkable word-of-mouth rise in China, with box office forecasts now topping the symbolic 1 billion yuan (about 146 million U.S. dollars) mark.

"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 on the first day, but has since steadily gained traction.

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 to Ye in his name. Over nearly two decades, the two women, though strangers separated by the sea, become quietly connected through correspondence and care.

Reportedly produced on a budget of just over 10 million yuan, the film's swift rise has made it one of China's biggest cinematic surprises of 2026, and it is widely hailed for its emotional authenticity, grounded storytelling and unusually convincing performances from first-time actors.

"The acting felt very natural -- nothing seemed forced or out of place," one female viewer said in a TV interview after watching the film. "Everything felt simple and understated, but the emotions came through very naturally."

Another young female viewer, still teary-eyed, said the film left her reflecting on women's resilience and mutual support, while also evoking a strong emotional attachment to family, country and cultural roots.

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.

Writer and filmmaker Han Han recommended the film on social media on Wednesday, describing it as "highly recommended -- strongly, strongly recommended," while expressing hope that its box office earnings could surpass 1 billion yuan.

By Friday afternoon, the film's box office earnings had reached 255 million yuan. Film data platforms Maoyan and Beacon now project total revenue of more than 1 billion yuan -- a sharp jump from around 700 million yuan just two days ago, and far above initial estimates of roughly 50 million yuan. That would place the film well ahead of other May Day holiday releases, which are expected to finish their runs with much lower totals.

Yin Hong, vice chairman of the China Film Association and a professor at Tsinghua University, in a brief note to Xinhua, attributed the film's success to a combination of "a distinctive subject matter, deeply resonant emotions, tight pacing, a convincing story and disciplined, cost-effective production."

He added that such fundamentals outweighed celebrity appeal, established intellectual property or spectacle, which he described as supplementary rather than essential.

The film's path has been anything but conventional.

Rather than casting established names, Lan's team spent nine months scouring the Chaoshan-dialect-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. Before she arrived on set, the director spent two days rehearsing every extra and every background detail, carefully building the scene until it felt less like a set and more like a living, breathing period environment.

"She is a naturally empathetic person. The moment she stepped into that space, she was pulled into the character's world," Lan said in a social media post. "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 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 problems 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."

Director 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 how a deeply regional story, told with enough honesty, can achieve broad appeal.