Kinship, roots link Chinese at home, afar

Hit film “Dear You” strikes chord with portrayal of Chinese diaspora’s dedication

As the cinematic hit “Dear You” — which follows a young ethnic Chinese man uncovering the history of his family roots through a bundle of old letters — sweeps global screens, a surge of young people, some from Southeast Asia, are flocking to a roadside stall in Shishi, Fujian province, a hometown of many Chinese people who moved overseas.

They come to find Jiang Mingdian, 78, one of China’s last active professional writers of qiaopi — a unique form of mail combining family letters and remittances that was showcased in the film.

Seated at his wooden table — filled with well-thumbed foreign dictionaries — Jiang now helps curious young visitors inspired by the movie to write letters in the old qiaopi style, using traditional characters written in vertical lines to convey messages that are then put in postage-stamped traditional envelopes.

“They come to me for everything — to write an apology to the mother abroad, to grab a traditional envelope with stamps for a cousin overseas, or to pen letters to future selves,” Jiang said. “They seek a sense of ceremony to keep as a memento.”

For 60 years, the junior high school graduate has penned over 100,000 letters, mostly from the 1960s to 1990s, for mothers and wives in his hometown of Shishi, a county-level city in Quanzhou, Fujian, to their sons and husbands who, driven by poverty at home, sailed abroad to make a living.

This enduring emotion also resonated with President Xi Jinping. During his 2020 visit to a qiaopi museum in Shantou, Guangdong province, Xi praised the profound value of this cultural heritage, which was included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2013.

“These letters recorded the strenuous efforts of the old generation of overseas Chinese and their profound love for the hometown and the motherland, and embodied the credibility and integrity of the Chinese nation,” Xi said.

On many occasions, Xi has commended overseas Chinese — a group that comprises more than 60 million people residing in 200 countries and regions — for their vital role in driving China’s development and deepening international cooperation.

In an instruction conveyed at a meeting on work related to Chinese nationals overseas held in Beijing on July 27 and 28, Xi called for rallying the strength of overseas Chinese to build China into a strong country and for advancing national rejuvenation.

Building deep trust

The vision stems from Xi’s time working in Fujian from 1985 to 2002. The province is the ancestral home to a diaspora of over 20 million people, a community to which Xi has long attached immense importance.

Liao Meng, an associate research fellow at the Fujian Academy of Social Sciences, said Xi would personally visit influential diaspora leaders at home and abroad, resolving their doubts with genuine sincerity, building deep trust, and warmly inviting them to return and see their hometowns.

In 1991, Xi, then Party secretary of Fuzhou, led a delegation to Indonesia to visit Liem Sioe Liong, founder of the conglomerate Salim Group and then a prominent diaspora leader and influential business tycoon, inviting him to invest in his hometown of Fuqing in Fuzhou.

Xi used a vivid metaphor, comparing the food and oil that Liem had sent home during China’s past hardships to “giving eggs”. He then proposed partnering to build an industrial park — essentially giving locals a “hen” and teaching them how to “raise hens to lay eggs” for self-sustaining growth.

Liem was deeply inspired. Salim Group and the Fuqing government then signed an agreement to develop the Yuanhong Investment Zone. It became China’s largest foreign-funded comprehensive land development project at the time.

Ong Tee Keat, president of the Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific, said the “three benefits” principle proposed by Xi — being advantageous to investors, host nations and China — offers valuable guidance for diaspora engagement, particularly in advancing BRI projects.

‘Rallying hearts’

Liao, the research fellow, noted that the overarching goal of China’s diaspora affairs has been upgraded from simply attracting capital and talent to “rallying hearts and pooling strength”.

Just as President Xi instructed during his 2024 inspection of Fujian, the province is actively leveraging ancestral culture, kinship ties and native bonds to widely unite overseas Chinese, Liao said.

In August, Hnin Yu Wa Di Hlaing, a Chinese language teacher and third-generation immigrant in Myanmar whose Chinese name is Chen An, led a group of 10 youths from Myanmar who are of Fujian descent on a meaningful roots-seeking journey to China.

Chen’s family roots trace back to Fuzhou. In the 1940s, amid times of hardship, her grandparents left their hometown and migrated to Myanmar to build a new life.

This enduring bond was written in her family history. Around 2010, her 90-year-old grandfather returned to Changle, knocking on doors from memory until he finally traced his long-lost brother. The two elderly men wept in a tight embrace — a final reunion before both passed away shortly afterward.

“My father insisted we master the language to never forget our roots,” the 24-year-old teacher said.

Ong, president of the Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific, said that the qiaopi movie has moved countless young ethnic Chinese viewers to tears, as its storyline evokes memories of the hardships and struggles endured by their forefathers in their adopted homelands. ZHANG YI & HU MEIDONG, Fuzhou, MDT/China Daily