Dear You (2026): A Roundtable on Transnational Ties, Chinese Soft Power and Geopolitical Anxieties

Lan Hongchun’s Teochew-language box office sleeper hit Dear You (《给阿嬷的情书, 2026) has emerged as an extraordinary cultural and commercial phenomenon across mainland China and Southeast Asia. Weaving an intimate, multi-generational family narrative through the archival medium of qiaopi (侨批, historical remittance letters) connecting South China with Thailand and Malaya, the film has struck a profound emotional chord with audiences in China and Southeast Asia.

Yet, beyond its remarkable box office success, what does Dear You reveal about regional fractures, contrasting language policies and geopolitical sensitivities? While celebrated for its affective power and moving story, how does the film’s circulation across Southeast Asia intersect with broader anxieties surrounding Chinese soft-power strategies in relation to the ethnic Chinese diaspora?

Following the success of our roundtable New Chinese Migrants (Xinyimin 新移民) in Southeast Asia: Partnerships, Engagement and Faultlines, the Contemporary China Centre brings together an interdisciplinary panel of scholars in screen studies, media production, and Southeast Asian history to discuss Dear You from various perspectives.

Each panelist will speak for about 15 minutes, followed by a moderated roundtable discussion and an open audience Q&A.

Speakers: 

• Dr Siao Yuong (Rong) Fong (King's College London)
• Dr Xiaoning Lu (SOAS, University of London)
• Associate Professor Wasana Wongsurawat (Chulalongkorn University)

Chair: Dr How Wee Ng

The event is free to attend and open to all. It will be hosted online via MS Teams. The joining link will be sent after registration.

Speaker biographies

Dr Siao Yuong (Rong) Fong 

Dr Siao Yuong (Rong) Fong is Lecturer in Digital Media Industries at King's College London. Her research sits at the intersections of Media and Cultural Studies, Production Studies, and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, with a focus on media industries, creative labour, illiberal media, and production cultures in East and Southeast Asia. She is the author of Performing Fear in Television Production: Practices of an Illiberal Democracy (Amsterdam University Press, 2022). Rong is Co-Editor for Cultural Commons and Book Reviews at the European Journal of Cultural Studies and co-founder of the Asian Media Industries Research Network.

Dr Xiaoning Lu

Dr Xiaoning Lu is Reader in Modern Chinese Culture and Language and Deputy Head of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on modern Chinese cinema, visual culture, socialist film culture, and the transnational circulation of Chinese cinema. She is the author of Moulding the Socialist Subject: Cinema and Chinese Modernity, 1949–1966 (Brill, 2020) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures (Oxford University Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in leading journals such as the Journal of Contemporary China and the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, alongside contributions to international film festivals.

Associate Professor Wasana Wongsurawat

Associate Professor Wasana Wongsurawat serves as Associate Professor of Modern Chinese History at Chulalongkorn University. Her research interests include the history of the Chinese diaspora, the history of China-Southeast Asia relations, urban history, and global history. Her first monograph, The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and Founding of the Thai Nation, was published with the University of Washington Press in 2019. She is currently working on a sequel, The Crown and the Communists: PRC-Thai Relations in the Post-Cold War, which investigates the close and highly influential relationship between the Thai royal family and the Chinese Communist Party.

Chair biography

Dr How Wee Ng 

Dr How Wee Ng is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies and co-founding Director of Association for Curators and Programmers of Asian Cinemas (ACPAC). He examines screen cultures and the cultural politics of representation in the Sinosphere. He is the author of The Chinese Censorship Discourse on Television Dramas: Worrying about the Audience in Postsocialist China (Routledge, 2026).