This summer, a low-budget Chinese drama has become an unexpected cultural flashpoint halfway across the world, after a sleeper box office success from China reignited long-simmering conversations about cultural identity and language policy in Singapore. *Dear You*, a nostalgic story exploring family bonds, hardship, and cross-generational hope, was shot almost entirely in Teochew — a regional dialect originating from China’s Chaoshan area that remains a mother tongue for many older ethnic Chinese communities across Southeast Asia, including Singapore.
When the film arrived in Singaporean cinemas this month, local audiences were quick to express frustration: most screenings were slated to run only with a Mandarin dub. Mandarin, one of Singapore’s four official languages alongside English, Malay, and Tamil, has been actively promoted by the government for decades as a unifying common language for the country’s Chinese majority, at the expense of regional Chinese dialects. Only eight special original-language Teochew screenings were initially scheduled, and all tickets sold out in under two hours, highlighting overwhelming unmet demand from local viewers.
Wu Silin, a Singaporean church worker who secured tickets to one of the rare original screenings alongside her mother, noted that experiencing the film in Teochew added an irreplaceable layer of personal meaning for community members. The outcry over limited original screenings quickly grew into a broader public debate about Singapore’s decades-long language policy. Even expats like Anna Zhang, a Beijing-based worker who relocated to Singapore for employment, sought out the original Teochew cut with subtitles, arguing that dubbed versions lose the authentic nuance of the original characters’ performances.
Written on a modest budget and led mostly by first-time actors, *Dear You* follows the journey of a young southern Chinese villager who travels to Thailand to track down his grandfather, who fled his hometown in 1948 to avoid conscription during China’s civil war. The grandfather built a new life as a trishaw rider in 1950s Bangkok, sending years of longing-filled letters back to his wife and children in China. The story’s themes resonate deeply with Singapore’s ethnic Chinese community, 70% of the country’s total population, whose ancestors were part of the massive 19th to mid-20th century wave of Chinese migration that brought millions to Southeast Asia in search of new lives.
“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,” explained Lee Cher Leng, an 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 something so impactful to the surface.”
Singapore’s official approach to dialects dates back to the 1960s, when the government adopted a national bilingual policy that designated English as a universal working language and assigned one of four ethnic “mother tongues” — Mandarin for Chinese Singaporeans — to be taught in schools. The 1979 Speak Mandarin Campaign amplified this push, aiming to unify the linguistically diverse Chinese community by replacing regional dialects including Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka with standard Mandarin. By the 1980s, dialect content had been removed from radio and television, and most films screened in Singapore were dubbed into Mandarin.
The policy has been undeniably successful in its original goals: in 1980, roughly 70% of Singaporean Chinese spoke a dialect at home. By 2020, that number had plummeted to just 8.7%, with dialect use now concentrated almost entirely among a shrinking cohort of elderly Singaporeans. Today, nearly half of all Singaporeans report English as their most comfortable language, but restrictions on dialect content remain largely in place.
In response to the public outcry over *Dear You*, Singapore’s Ministry of Communications and Information acknowledged widespread calls for more accessible dialect film screenings in a public statement, announcing that authorities would adopt a “more flexible approach” to the policy. Following the initial sell-out of the eight original screenings, a second round of 5,000 tickets for eight additional shows sold out in two hours, and authorities approved 50 more Teochew-language screenings just days later. Some viewers even reported planning cross-border trips to neighboring Malaysia to catch the original cut before the additional screenings were approved.
The debate has drawn commentary from across Singapore’s political and cultural spheres. In an open letter published in *The Straits Times*, two local filmmakers argued that the Speak Mandarin Campaign had fully achieved its founding goal of unifying Chinese Singaporeans around Mandarin, and that relaxing dialect screening rules would signal a new, mature approach to celebrating the community’s cultural diversity. Opposition Member of Parliament Dennis Tan echoed this sentiment in a Facebook post, framing dialects as “the living, breathing repositories of our forefathers’ journeys, customs, and identity.” Two sitting lawmakers have also formally submitted questions to authorities about revising rules for screening original dialect films, ensuring the conversation will continue in official circles.
For many Singaporeans, the film is more than entertainment — it is a window into a fading cultural heritage. Wu, who attended the original screening, pointed to a Teochew coming-of-age ritual featured in the film called “leaving the garden,” which was held for her when she turned 15 but was omitted for her niece’s 15th birthday last year, an example of how cultural traditions tied to dialect are disappearing alongside the language itself.
While a growing number of young Singaporeans have begun pursuing connection to their ancestral roots in recent years — taking dialect classes, organizing trips to ancestral hometowns in China, and seeking out community dialect events — academics warn this grassroots interest is not enough to reverse the long-term decline of dialect use. “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 in daily life, you’re not going to be able to retain it,” said Tan Ying Ying, an associate professor at Nanyang Technological University specializing in dialect studies. She described the public uproar over *Dear You* as “perhaps like grieving a loss” for a cultural heritage that is slowly fading from daily life in Singapore.
