Teochew film Dear You sells out screenings in Singapore theatres

High Demand for Limited Teochew Screenings

Clover Films originally received permission for just eight screenings of the Teochew-language original at a single cinema. According to box office data, all 4,800 tickets sold out within two hours. A second batch of eight screenings followed on June 22, drawing crowds that queued for up to four hours at the Golden Village cinema in the VivoCity mall, where roughly 200 people waited in person. By late June, IMDA approved an additional 40 screenings, moving 14,000 tickets in under three hours. A further 70 screenings rolled out across nine cinemas operated by Golden Village and Shaw Brothers, bringing the total approved Teochew screenings to 272 by July.

The film, directed by Lan Hongchun and titled Gei ama de qingshu (love letters to grandma) in Chinese, follows a grandson from Shantou, Guangdong, who travels to Bangkok to find his grandfather. He discovers that the man died in 1960 and that a woman in Thailand spent decades preserving the remittance letters known as qiaopi sent in his name. Writing in Mothership, journalist Constance Tan noted that her grandmother—who hails from Jieyang, one of the three main Teochew cities in eastern Guangdong, and knows only about ten words of Mandarin—attended the Mandarin-dubbed version after missing the Teochew sessions. Without her native dialect, Tan’s grandmother missed most of the dialogue, relying entirely on the visual architecture and settings of the film to follow the narrative.

The Roots of the Speak Mandarin Campaign

The regulatory framework limiting dialect screenings stems from policies established nearly five decades ago. On September 7, 1979, then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew officially launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Earlier that year, an education system review led by Minister for Education Goh Keng Swee revealed that fewer than 40% of pupils achieved minimum competence in two languages, a shortcoming officials attributed to the various dialects children spoke at home. Singapore’s educational model instructed Chinese pupils in English and Mandarin. Lee maintained that children speaking Hokkien, Teochew, or Cantonese at home would fail to master either official language.

Beyond education, the campaign served major political and social unification goals. Early Chinese immigrants to Singapore arrived from regions like Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan, speaking mutually unintelligible languages and organizing their community institutions—such as clan associations, schools, temples, and newspapers—strictly by native place and dialect. State officials concluded that establishing a single Chinese language would allow the government to address the population directly. Lee viewed Mandarin as the logical instrument for homogenization, noting that while English served as the language of administration and work, it lacked emotional resonance as a mother tongue. In his opening address at the 1984 campaign, Lee stated that English would never be emotionally acceptable as a mother tongue, whereas Mandarin successfully united the distinct dialect groups.

The Phase-Out of Broadcast Dialects

Authorities enforced the transition primarily through the media sector. Broadcasters withdrew dialect advertising from television in 1978. Starting in late October 1979, Hong Kong television serials—previously a staple of Cantonese viewing—were dubbed into Mandarin before transmission. All dialect programs vanished from television by 1981 and from radio on January 1, 1983. This shift ended the era of traditional storytellers from the Hong Kong-based subscription broadcaster Rediffusion, whose serialized narratives had anchored shophouse and coffee-shop culture for three decades.

Lee Dai Sor, the most prominent of these storytellers, delivered his final broadcast on December 30, 1982, coinciding with the termination of Rediffusion’s Singapore dialect programming. Until his death in 1989, Lee continued performing at wedding banquets, recording Cantonese storytelling cassettes, and participating in the council of the Tung On Wui Kun clan association. Lee Kuan Yew himself stopped speaking Hokkien publicly in 1979, a deliberate personal decision he defended decades later as essential to the broader national language strategy.

IMDA approval and the Speak Mandarin Campaign

• Why did the Teochew screenings of Dear You require special approval? IMDA guidelines historically require Chinese-language films intended for general release in Singapore to be in Mandarin, necessitating special exemptions for dialect-original screenings.
• How many Teochew screenings were ultimately authorized? Following rapid ticket sellouts, IMDA approved a total of 272 Teochew screenings across multiple cinema chains by July.
• When did Singapore launch the Speak Mandarin Campaign? Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew launched the campaign on September 7, 1979, to consolidate Chinese Singaporeans under a single common language.
• What happened to dialect broadcasting in Singapore? Dialect advertising ended in 1978, television serials were dubbed into Mandarin starting in late 1979, and all dialect programs were removed from television by 1981 and radio by January 1, 1983.