Dear You review – enjoyable Chinese romdram crosses generations as it tracks down a missing husband

With a story that ranges from the 1940s to the present and, although mostly set in Bangkok, revolving largely around Teochew-speaking Chinese from Guangdong, this generations-spanning drama feels like a good old-fashioned novel. A romantic beach read, perhaps, the kind in which coincidences and random accidents cause misunderstandings that last for decades until the truth is finally revealed. It’s sentimental in places, sure, but there’s also a fair bit of salty, bawdy humour to cut the sweetness, lashings of period colour, and impressively naturalistic performances from a mostly non-professional cast. All that has helped to make this an unexpectedly large box-office hit in the People’s Republic last month; and for non-Chinese or Thai rom-dram aficionados anywhere, it’s well worth looking out for.

As the story opens in the 21st century in the Chinese city of Shantou, octogenarian Shurou (Iap Sok-jiu) is celebrating her 87th birthday, surrounded by adoring friends, family and neighbours who revere the matriarch, not least for managing to raise three kids on her own in the 1940s and 50s. Her shifty grandson Xiaowei (Hiau-ui), however, is less of a solid citizen and, having got into debt, he decides to travel to Bangkok to find out if Shurou’s husband Zheng Musheng, not seen for decades, could help out since he’s reputed to have made a fortune out there, endowed schools all over Thailand, and had a second family after abandoning Shurou.

After the obligatory research montage, the story that Xiaowei uncovers forms a nested narrative that throws back some 70 years to tell Musheng’s story. Naturally, things didn’t happen quite like everyone thought. The woman everyone assumed was his second wife turns out to have been Xie Nanzhi (Li Sitong), the only child of an innkeeper in Bangkok’s Chinatown, who rented a room to Musheng. Nanzhi and Musheng appear to have a strictly business relationship at first, but their friendship grew when Musheng effectively started an illegal school in the boarding house to teach the local kids how to read and write Mandarin. Literacy emerges as a key theme here, especially since Musheng could only keep his connection to Shorou alive by sending her special remittance missives called qiaopi that contained money that helped his family survive back home.

If you train your ears to tune out the sappy instrumental score that accompanies the action throughout, there’s loads to enjoy here. Director Lan Hongchun moves the story along at pace, and there are dozens of entertaining side characters and bits of comedy to jolly the story along, as well as a very palpable sense of place.