HIT MOVIE SERVES UP A TASTE OF NOSTALGIA

As Dear You continues to dominate the Chinese box office, the food it features is earning as much critical acclaim as the film itself

As the film Dear You continues its strong Chinese box-office run, surpassing 1.1 billion yuan ($162 million) since its release on April 30, a bowl of dark pickled olive vegetable and a plate of rice-less cakes have unexpectedly moved audiences to tears. These traditional foods from Chaoshan — a region that includes the cities of Shantou, Chaozhou and Jieyang, all in Guangdong province, and is known for its strong clan traditions and well-preserved folk customs — have quietly stepped into the spotlight, becoming some of the film's most emotional symbols.

Threaded through the story are decades of qiaopi letters — overseas Chinese correspondence that once connected families across Southeast Asia and southern China. Alongside them, the enduring flavors of Chaoshan cuisine emerge as a living archive of migration, longing and home.

From ancestral Guangdong courtyards to streets in far-flung Chinatowns, these everyday dishes have carried generations of memory and are now becoming a window for the world to rediscover Chaoshan's landscape, people and history. For many viewers, the film is not just a story of distance and return, but a shared memory.