When a modest Chaoshan-dialect film about an indebted grandson, a missing grandfather and a bundle of yellowing remittance letters opened quietly in China in late April, few expected it to become one of the biggest films of the year. Yet Dear You has earned more than 1.8 billion yuan (US$265.75 million) at the Chinese box office. It has done so without major stars or heavy promotion – an unlikely triumph for a film told largely in Teochew or Chiu Chow.

As the film is released across Southeast Asia, however, it has also prompted reflection on how Chinese communities remember migration.

The film unfolds across generations. A young man from the Chaoshan region travels to Thailand to track down his grandmother’s long-absent husband. His search is intercut with scenes from an earlier wave of migration, when Chinese men left for Southeast Asia and mailed home qiaopi – letters enclosing money and scraps of news, apology and hope. Many of these letters are now archived in Unesco’s Memory of the World Register, but for audiences in China and Southeast Asia, they evoke memories of how families endured years apart.