BEIJING: As the cinematic hit Dear You — which follows a young ethnic Chinese man uncovering the history of his family roots through a bundle of old letters — sweeps global screens, a surge of young people, some from Southeast Asia, are flocking to a roadside stall in Shishi, Fujian province, a hometown of many Chinese people who moved overseas.
They come to find Jiang Mingdian, 78, one of China’s last active professional writers of qiaopi — a unique form of mail combining family letters and remittances that was showcased in the film.
Seated at his wooden table — filled with well-thumbed foreign dictionaries — Jiang now helps curious young visitors inspired by the movie to write letters in the old qiaopi style, using traditional characters written in vertical lines to convey messages that are then put in postage-stamped traditional envelopes.
“They come to me for everything — to write an apology to the mother abroad, to grab a traditional envelope with stamps for a cousin overseas, or to pen letters to future selves,” Jiang said. “They seek a sense of ceremony to keep as a memento.”
For 60 years, the junior high school graduate has penned over 100,000 letters, mostly from the 1960s to 1990s, for mothers and wives in his hometown of Shishi, a county-level city in Quanzhou, Fujian, to their sons and husbands who, driven by poverty at home, sailed abroad to make a living.
This enduring emotion also resonated with President Xi Jinping. During his 2020 visit to a qiaopi museum in Shantou, Guangdong province, Xi praised the profound value of this cultural heritage, which was included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2013.
“These letters recorded the strenuous efforts of the old generation of overseas Chinese and their profound love for the hometown and the motherland, and embodied the credibility and integrity of the Chinese nation,” Xi said.
On many occasions, Xi has commended overseas Chinese — a group that comprises more than 60 million people residing in 200 countries and regions — for their vital role in driving China’s development and deepening international cooperation.
In an instruction conveyed at a meeting on work related to Chinese nationals overseas held in Beijing on July 27 and 28, Xi called for rallying the strength of overseas Chinese to build China into a strong country and for advancing national rejuvenation. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
