A Teochew-language film about migration, memory and family ties is turning villages in China’s Chaoshan region into destinations for travelers tracing ancestral roots across Southeast Asia.
Dear You follows Zheng Xiaowei as she travels to Thailand to look for her grandfather Musheng, who left China in 1948. The story is told almost entirely in Teochew, giving audiences from the wider diaspora an unusually direct connection to the language, food and domestic spaces shown on screen.
Channel News Asia reported that visitors are now seeking out filming locations in Jieyang and Shantou, reenacting scenes and photographing village landmarks. A Malaysian tour group visited an old mansion in Shantou on July 16, part of a broader rise in heritage itineraries built around family history rather than conventional sightseeing.
The film has also renewed attention on qiaopi, the letters and remittance documents once sent home by overseas Chinese. These records connect private family histories to the commercial networks that linked Chaoshan with Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia.
For village authorities and residents, the new interest brings both opportunity and pressure. Xiqi Village is pursuing a national AAA tourist-attraction rating, while local businesses are adapting to larger visitor numbers. At the same time, many locations remain working homes and neighborhoods, making crowd management and cultural preservation central to any lasting tourism strategy.
The result is a form of screen tourism rooted less in celebrity than in recognition: viewers see a language, migration story and family landscape that rarely occupy the center of a commercial film. That emotional connection is now reshaping how the region presents its heritage to visitors from across Asia.
Source: Channel News Asia.
Image: Visitors at a qiaopi-themed display in Xiqi Village, Jieyang, on July 14, 2026. Photograph by Hu Chushi/CNA; editorial news usage.
