Link to film: 
https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/dear-you/
Some of you may have seen this
photo of my aunt practicing Chinese exercise to nourish the Kidney on my website. She was living in the Tan family house near Shantou in Ghuangzhou (Canton) province where I first met her on my trip to China in 2012 before going to Harbin to study Chinese Medicine. This view of the house can be seen in Dear You new Chinese film about this region.
This year, an independent film in Teochew, one of the few in the local dialect, was released and was the biggest selling film in China. It was a box office success in Thailand and Penang and has had a short run in the beautiful art deco Garden Cinema in Covent Garden, near my acupuncture clinic in the Piazza.
The film follows the plight of a young Chinese man who, like my father, left Shantou and went to Thailand in search of work. Unlike my father he left his family behind. The title of the film in Chinese is “Love letter to Grandma”. I will not reveal anymore of the plot other than to say take a big box of tissues.
The Tan family house was started by my grandfather and completed by when my grandmother when he died young. She left to her three sons: my father the eldest went to Thailand; the middle went to Penang, Malaysia to make his fortune; and the younger one was a teacher who lived through the cultural revolution. His grandson, Chen* Ye, who kindly hired a driver and translator for my grand visit in 2012, is a lecturer of Chinese philosophy and culture. He raised money from family and beyond and he himself also worked to restore this beautiful home.
The courtyard where my aunt is practicing her exercises can be seen in the film Dear You. Using artistic licence the director placed it in Bangkok towards the end of the film, the actor saying that “it is just like a house from our region in China”. In fact, it was!
*the name Tan in Teochew is Chan in Cantonese and Chen in Mandarin. I was delighted to discover that I share a surname with my taiji Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang. The Thai government insisted that Chinese immigrents adopt a Thai name, and my father chose Ichajapanich