A Teochew-Language Film Ignites a Debate on Identity in Singapore
A nostalgic tale about family, hope and hardship, Dear You has swept the box office in China this summer — and opened an unexpected conversation about identity thousands of miles away in Singapore.
The film, shot almost entirely in Teochew, a dialect from China’s Chaoshan region still spoken among older generations of Chinese in Southeast Asia, became a sleeper hit in its home market. But when it arrived in Singapore cinemas this month, many were dismayed to learn that most screenings would be dubbed into Mandarin — the lingua franca of China and one of Singapore’s four official languages, alongside English.
“Being Teochew, watching it in Teochew makes it even more special,” says Wu Silin, a church worker. She and her mother managed to get tickets to one of just eight special Teochew screenings. The tickets reportedly sold out in less than two hours.
The question many locals are asking: if the film is shown in its original language in China, why not in Singapore, where Teochew is still spoken by many older Chinese Singaporeans?
The movie has inadvertently reignited debate over the government’s long-standing push for Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin instead of other Chinese languages — officially referred to as “dialects.” What began in the 1970s as an effort to unify the Chinese community has proven so effective that, some argue, it has driven Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka into an irreversible decline.
Authorities have now responded to the impassioned calls for more dialect screenings. “We hear the calls for dialect films to be more freely screened in cinemas,” Singapore’s Ministry of Information said in a statement on Monday, promising to “take a more flexible approach.” An additional eight shows — nearly 5,000 tickets — went on sale and sold out within two hours. By Thursday, 50 more screenings were approved in Teochew.
To many Singaporeans, Dear You is a bittersweet journey into their own past, told in a tongue that has crossed the seas and entered a new era. Even those who don’t understand Teochew have sought out the original version. “I think sometimes it’s just the vibe,” says Anna Zhang, a 35-year-old from Beijing who moved to Singapore for work. She watched it in Teochew with subtitles, as she would any foreign film. “I’m not saying these translated versions are not good, but I do feel there is a bit of difference … It doesn’t feel like this is coming from the original character.”
With a modest budget and a cast of mostly rookie actors, Dear You tells the story of a young man from a southern Chinese village who sets off to Thailand to find his grandfather. The grandfather fled their village in 1948 to avoid being conscripted into the civil war, eventually became a trishaw rider in 1950s Thailand, and sent letters filled with longing to his wife and children back home. The film, especially in its original Teochew, strikes at the root of identity because it is set against the historical wave of migration when millions of Chinese undertook perilous sea journeys to reach Singapore and other parts of Southeast Asia between the 19th and mid-20th centuries.
“Dialects have always been the root of where the Singaporean Chinese come from. Mandarin, I would say, is mostly a superimposed language that we learn from schools,” says Lee Cher Leng, associate professor of Chinese studies at the National University of Singapore. “I think it’s really interesting that a small movie like that would bring [up] something so impactful.”
Dialects were once spoken widely among Singapore’s Chinese community, which makes up more than 70% of the population. But they disappeared from the airwaves in the 1980s after the government launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign, which encouraged Chinese residents to use Mandarin instead of their various tongues. Dialects have since been dubbed over in cinemas and scrubbed from radio and television programmes. The policy was part of a broader bilingual education system adopted in the 1960s, which mandated English for all Singaporeans alongside a “mother tongue” determined by ethnicity.
At the campaign’s launch, nearly 70% of Singaporeans spoke a Chinese dialect at home. By 2020, that figure had plummeted to 8.7%. Many curbs remain in place even today, although English is now cited as the most comfortable language for nearly half of the population.
Since the 1990s, the campaign has shifted its focus away from dialect speakers and toward English-educated ethnic Chinese. “The campaign has achieved what it set out to do — it has established Mandarin as the common language among Chinese Singaporeans and dismantled the dialect landscape,” reads a letter by two filmmakers published last week in the Straits Times. “Screening a dialect film is now no different from screening a French or Malay film.” They asked: “What better way to confirm the success of the Speak Mandarin campaign than to relax this rule completely,” to “signal a maturity” in dealing with cultural diversity among Chinese Singaporeans?
The sentiment has echoed across social media and commentaries, drawing politicians into the conversation. Opposition MP Dennis Tan hailed dialects on Facebook as “the living, breathing repositories of our forefathers’ journeys, customs, and identity.” Two lawmakers have also said they asked authorities about screening movies in their original dialects.
“Actually a lot of people can’t speak dialect [anymore],” Wu says. “I think it’s time they revisit this policy. If they want to retain some of our culture, then I think it’s important.”
The film also highlights disappearing traditions. One touching scene depicts a Teochew coming-of-age ritual known as “leaving the garden,” which Wu herself underwent at 15. When her niece turned 15 last year, Wu says there was no such celebration. Still, some young Singaporeans are showing growing interest in connecting with their heritage — learning dialects, taking lessons, and organizing trips to ancestral hometowns in China. But Tan Ying Ying, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University who studies dialects, isn’t optimistic such efforts will reverse the trend. “Young people who are learning them now … You can learn it like a foreign language and learn it for fun. But if no-one is speaking it, you’re not going to be able to retain it,” she says. The uproar over Dear You, Tan adds, is perhaps “like grieving a loss.”