China student discovered on video platform shines as heroine in acclaimed film ‘Dear You’

Recent graduate Li Sitong hopes for more acting roles after starring in emotional telling of a decades-spanning secret involving a stranger When 'Dear You', a low-budget Teochew-language story of migration became one of China’s biggest films in late spring and early summer, its lead actress Li Sitong, who played Zia Lamgi, became a university graduate and said she wished to continue her acting career. The film directed by Lan Hongchun tells a story of a young Teochew man travelling to Thailand to search for his estranged grandfather Ten Baksheng, and ending up discovering that he had long been dead and it was his friend, Lamgi, who sent love letters to his wife Iap Sok-jiu, for nearly two decades. The film was produced for a reported 14 million yuan (US$2 million), and has taken nearly 2 billion yuan at the Chinese box office. Not only did Teochew people resonate with the film, reliving their family memories that also involve a diaspora and remittance letters called qiaopi, young Chinese across the country were moved by the story. One commented Dear You was “the best Chinese film in the past five years”.

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