BEIJING -- China's word-of-mouth hit "Dear You" crossed the 1 billion yuan (about $146 million) mark at the box office as of Sunday morning, according to ticketing platform Maoyan, reaching a major milestone for the low-budget, Chaoshan (Teochew)-dialect film featuring a largely unknown cast.
Released on April 30 with just a 3.6 percent share of nationwide cinema screenings and an opening-day box office of 3.77 million yuan, the film steadily gained momentum as audience recommendations spread. Sunday marked its 15th consecutive day atop China's daily box office charts, with its screening share climbing to 48 percent.
Despite lacking a star-studded production team, marquee actors or the kind of large-scale online marketing campaigns typically used to promote major theatrical releases, "Dear You" has defied expectations through strong word of mouth, drawing widespread praise from moviegoers, bloggers, critics and filmmakers.
The film currently holds a 9.1-out-of-10 rating on Chinese review platform Douban -- among the highest-rated domestic releases of the past decade -- and has become a broader cultural talking point in China, sparking extensive discussion about the reasons behind its success and what it may signal for the country's cultural and creative industries.
Directed by Lan Hongchun, a native of the Chaoshan region in southern China's Guangdong province, and reportedly produced on a budget of just over 10 million yuan, the film has been widely praised for its emotional authenticity, grounded storytelling and unusually convincing performances from little-known actors, particularly its lead performance by a 20-year-old finance student with no prior acting experience.
The story centers on the tradition of "qiaopi," letters and remittances sent home by earlier generations of overseas Chinese in the 19th and 20th centuries, which form the emotional thread linking the film's central characters. UNESCO added the "qiaopi" archives to its Memory of the World Register in 2013.
In the film, Zheng Musheng leaves his Chaoshan home for Southeast Asia during wartime in the 1940s and eventually settles in Thailand, regularly sending letters and money to his wife, Ye Shurou, who remains behind raising their children. After Zheng dies overseas, Xie Nanzhi, a woman of Chaoshan descent living in Thailand who befriends him, chooses not to immediately tell Ye, 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.
Film data platforms Maoyan and Beacon now project "Dear You" to end its theatrical run with a final box office tally of nearly 1.8 billion yuan, after revising their projections upward multiple times.
