"Dear You", a 2026 Chinese film about the historic diaspora experience of people from the Chaoshan region of south China's Guangdong Province, has resonated well with Chinese communities around the globe as it screens overseas, with many audience members making trips back to their hometowns after watching it.
The movie, known in Chinese as "Love Letters to Grandma," centers on remittance letters, or qiaopi, used by overseas Chinese to stay connected with their families back home, particularly in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong. Through these letters, the characters uncover memories, love and interconnected family bonds in a simple yet deeply genuine narrative.
Xiao Ke, an overseas Chinese in the UK, remembers clearly Dear You's European premiere back in June. All 200-plus seats at London's Regent Street Cinema sold out quickly.
"It was a room full of sobbing. It really touches those of us abroad. After watching, we couldn't wait to return to our hometown, to the places we knew as children, to see how things have changed there," Xiao said.
Xiao booked his trip home soon after watching the movie. He landed in Guangdong's Shantou City alongside his old friend Zhao Wensheng, who has lived in Norway for nearly 40 years.
Zhao was particularly touched by the movie's portrayal of qiaopi.
"I've watched it five times," Zhao said. "And each time I felt different. My grandfather and many relatives were in Southeast Asia. When we were young, we really relied on the older generation's qiaopi. Later on we worked hard to make money and we also sent money back home."
The pair headed straight to Shantou's Small Park district, where they were born. They expressed great joy about once again tasting the street snacks they once had as children — rice cakes, oyster omelettes and fried tofu.
"After so many years abroad, what we miss most is the taste of home. In the old days Chaoshan snacks were tucked into every neighborhood. Now they're better built and more centralized, making it much easier for overseas Chinese returning to trace their roots," Xiao said.
"It's the taste of childhood. We want to return to your roots as we get older. I have a nostalgic attachment to my hometown, so I'm planning to open an art gallery here," Zhao said.
A 40 minute-drive away, the Qifeng Chen Ancestral Hall in Shantou's Dongli Town has seen a surge in visitors, many from Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Indonesia. The century-old building served as the filming location for Dear You.
"My whole trip this time was focused on watching Dear You. My maternal grandparents are from here. Our roots are here," said Chen Lili, an overseas Chinese from Indonesia.
Dear You has put Shantou on the tourist map so far this summer, with root-tracing tours opened one after another. The city's Chaoshan History and Culture Expo Center saw batches of Chinese teenagers from the United States, Russia, and other countries coming to learn about the history of qiaopi and experiencing the traditional culture.
Data from travel booking site Qunar show that after the film's release, air passengers to Shantou from Malaysia rose 67 percent year-on-year, with significant increases from Singapore and Thailand as well.
"Dear You" movie screening leads to tickets home among overseas Chinese
A small forestry town in southern Canada is edging toward oblivion as a decades-long tariff dispute with the United States drags on and the latest round of Trump tariffs deals a fresh blow to an already battered industry.
That latest blow has fallen on 100 Mile House, a district of roughly 2,000 people in south-central British Columbia (B.C.), where the sawmill shut permanently in December 2025 - the third in the region to close in recent years, costing 165 workers their jobs.
The closure came two months after the Trump administration added a 10 percent tariff on imported timber, citing national security concerns, on top of the countervailing duties the United States has imposed on Canadian softwood for years.
Maureen Pinkney, the mayor of 100 Mile House, said the shutdown has taken a toll on a small community where mill workers are an integral part.
"That's a real hard hit to very small communities where those people are an intricate part. And we had one mill worker leave and so did his wife who was a nurse. In the shortages of health care workers, that's a double hit which we really feel that," she said.
For workers in 100 Mile House, the mill closure brought steady work to an end.
"It's a direct hit against mill workers here for sure. And all of us went from one day working steady here, and to the next day, we're done," said Brundage, a forestry worker in 100 Mile House.
The softwood lumber dispute is among the longest-running and most costly trade conflicts between Canada and the United States.
It began in 1982, when Canadian softwood lumber exports accounted for more than a quarter of U.S. consumption. U.S. lumber producers argued that Canadian provincial governments gave forestry companies access to public timber at below-market prices, amounting to an unfair subsidy.
Canada has rejected that argument, saying its exporters benefit from efficient industry practices and resource management rather than government support.
Terry Kading, an associate professor of political studies at Thompson Rivers University, said the dispute reflects a recurring U.S. effort to protect domestic industries from Canadian competition.
"Once a sector in the United States, like the lumber industry, feels that Canada is doing something with its lumber, that's dumping or using different methods and things like that. The U.S. ended up defending its lumber industry in the States against Canada," Kading said.
That pattern has persisted for more than four decades, through five rounds of U.S. trade investigations, three bilateral agreements, none of which has delivered a lasting settlement.
The United States has imposed countervailing and anti-dumping duties on Canadian softwood lumber for nearly 20 years in total. The prolonged dispute has added to the pressure on British Columbia’s forestry industry.
According to the B.C. Forestry Council, more than 20 sawmills in the province have closed over the past three years, with tens of thousands of jobs lost.
The toll has drawn a response from Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who in a video on Tuesday cast the softwood dispute as part of a wider pattern of U.S. trade pressure on Canada.
"Not the first time Americans have tried to use tariffs to break us," Carney said.
That pattern stretches back more than a century, to 1866, when the United States unilaterally cut trade ties with British North America, the predecessor of modern Canada.
Some Canadian scholars said the long history of trade disputes carries a lesson about trust in their southern neighbor.
"Canadians have certainly learned that they can trust the U.S. completely. Trust the U.S. to harm us or stab us in the back. So yes, we can trust that the U.S. to do that. I think that's a lesson for this generation of Canadians that we can't take the U.S. for granted. And we've gone from an era of implicit trust with the U.S. to needing to verify the trust," said Carlo Dade, the Director of International Policy and head of the New North America Initiative from the University of Calgary.
U.S. tariffs deepen toll of long-running Canada lumber dispute
