How Lan Hongchun’s Teochew Film ‘Dear You’ Turned a Forgotten Postal Tradition Into China’s Unlikely Hit: ‘Dialect Is Never Going to Be a Liability as Long as You Have Great Ideas’

Lan Hongchun's film 'Dear You' is an unlikely hit in China—entirely in Teochew, a regional Chinese dialect. The film centers on a nineteen-fifties postal tradition in Bangkok: to send a letter home, overseas Chinese workers needed four people—a sender, a scribe to write it, a reader to interpret it, and the recipient who would hear it read aloud. Variety reports the film's success suggests that great storytelling doesn't need translation.

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