"A Love Letter to Grandma" Defies Expectations, Storms to 1.5 Billion Yuan on Word of Mouth

Thirty-six days into its run, the Cantonese-produced, Teochew-dialect film "A Love Letter to Grandma" has officially passed 1.5 billion yuan in cumulative box office, temporarily ranking second among mainland releases for 2026. The film's Douban rating has steadily climbed to 9.2, with more than 800,000 viewers contributing scores as its reputation continues to spread. Director Lan Hongchun shared his creative reflections in the People's Daily, and the film became a case study at the industry forum of the 17th Cross-Strait Film Exhibition. With a budget of just 14 million yuan and a cast of non-professional actors, this small-budget film has become a phenomenon-level cultural work and a topic of widespread discussion across the industry.

Dark Horse

Temporarily Second for the Year, Admissions Top 44 Million

"A Love Letter to Grandma" opened in cinemas nationwide on April 30 with a modest 1.6% of screenings and a first-day box office of 3.77 million yuan. Early on, the industry widely predicted the film would struggle to break 50 million yuan in total, yet it staged a comeback driven entirely by spontaneous word-of-mouth from audiences acting as volunteer promoters. As of press time, the film's total box office had surpassed 1.5 billion yuan, trailing only the year's top Spring Festival release and securing the runner-up spot for 2026. Cumulative admissions topped 44 million, with an average ticket price of just 34.2 yuan — the lowest among the year's top ten films.

During its run, the film claimed the mainland weekly box office crown for three consecutive weeks, peaking at 342 million yuan in a single week, with single-day takings accounting for as much as 77.8% of the national total. Its share of screenings surged from an opening 1.6% to 68.7%, and it held the top spot in nationwide attendance rate for 12 straight days, setting a box office growth record for domestic realist and dialect films over the past five years. The regional breakdown reflected a complete breakout: the film's home base of Chaoshan in Guangdong contributed more than 320 million yuan, while non-Chaoshan regions such as Jiangsu-Zhejiang, North China and the Southwest accounted for more than 65% of the total, defying the conventional market wisdom that dialect films are limited by geography and completing a leap from a Lingnan local production to the national market.

As the box office steadily climbed, the film's reputation kept building, with its Douban rating rising from an opening 9.0 to 9.2. More than 810,000 users contributed reviews, with five-star ratings making up 65.5% — better than the vast majority of Chinese-language family and drama films, placing it among the highest-rated domestic theatrical releases on Douban in the past decade.

Audiences spanned all ages. Younger viewers were moved by the film's themes of nostalgia across mountains and seas and its core values of faith and loyalty, with many fans returning for second and third viewings to sustain long-term box office. Older viewers came to theaters because the film recreated the experiences of their parents' generation — overseas remittance letters known as *qiaopi* and emigration to Southeast Asia — prompting waves of children bringing their elders to group screenings in many cities. Overseas Chinese living in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas unlocked the film early through the Cannes screening and advance previews; countless overseas Chinese sought out their own family *qiaopi* archives after watching, sparking a nationwide enthusiasm for tracing roots and learning about *qiaopi* culture.

Creation

Sincerity for Sincerity, Emotions Are Shared

As the film's popularity surged across the board, director Lan Hongchun recently published a bylined article in the People's Daily titled "Trading Sincerity for Sincerity: Emotions Are Shared," systematically reviewing the entire creative journey from tracing *qiaopi* origins to actual filming, and offering an in-depth interpretation of the creative roots in *qiaopi* culture and feelings for family and country.

According to the account, the film originated from the 2019 documentary fieldwork project "Flavors of the Four Seas." Over several years, the team visited hundreds of overseas Chinese families in Southeast Asia and pored over nearly a thousand original archived *qiaopi*, drawing creative material from the yellowed family letters. Classic lines in the film, such as "build your livelihood through diligence and thrift" and "upon receiving this letter, urgently redeem and bring our daughter home," were drawn respectively from Chaoshan elders' oral accounts and treasured archival *qiaopi*, each word inscribed with the hardship and tears of modern overseas Chinese. The design of inserting real archival *qiaopi* materials at the film's end was meant to tell audiences that every story in the film is rooted in genuine history, not fabricated.

In the article, Lan concluded that the film's ability to break through regional and demographic barriers to achieve universal empathy lay at its core in trading sincerity for sincerity. The production was financially strapped throughout, and most props were borrowed free of charge from Chaoshan villagers. Elderly overseas Chinese at the Teochew Association in Thailand worked without pay, repeating a single shot more than twenty times. Uncle Mian, the caretaker of the old Zhang family residence, waived all venue fees and lent the historic home to the crew for filming throughout the year. Both on and off screen, it all reflected the Chinese spirit of valuing emotion and loyalty.

Speaking of his original intent, Lan said that in today's fast-paced society, the film hopes to draw on *qiaopi* — a UNESCO Memory of the World heritage — to help the public understand the family love, nostalgia and devotion to country hidden in the letters of Chinese who emigrated to Southeast Asia, and to uncover the powerful vitality of Chinese culture as it migrates across regions and is passed down through generations.

Exchange

Quality Script and Sincere Performances Power a Box Office Hit

Not long ago, at the industry forum of the 17th Cross-Strait Film Exhibition held in Ya'an, Sichuan, "A Love Letter to Grandma" became the central topic of discussion. More than a hundred well-known filmmakers from both sides of the Strait engaged in in-depth exchanges on "cinematic expression of fine traditional Chinese culture," and the organizing committee designated the film a classic example of shared roots and cultural empathy across the Strait.

Leading mainland directors including Gu Changwei, Yang Yazhou and Cai Shangjun all strongly endorsed the film's creative philosophy. Cai bluntly noted that the current film industry is mired in the grip of traffic and algorithms, with investors blindly chasing short-term data, while "A Love Letter to Grandma" adheres to a creative attitude of "freedom from desire breeds strength" — refusing to pander to the market or pile on star power, instead rooting itself in local traditional culture to deeply explore the stories of ordinary people. He called this purity a precious and scarce energy in domestic cinema today. Gu commented that the film organically wove traditional culture such as *qiaopi* and Chaoshan folk customs into the characters' fates and dramatic conflicts, rather than simply piling on cultural elements, offering a fresh practical approach for adapting local intangible heritage and folk subjects to film and television.

Lan shared his creative insights on site, candidly admitting that he had long studied the representative works of Taiwan New Cinema directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang, repeatedly analyzing their narrative techniques. The shared Chinese cultural heritage on both sides of the Strait, he said, was the underlying foundation that allowed the film to move the entire Chinese-language world. Lead actors Li Sitong and Wang Yantong added that the film uses *qiaopi* to thread together nostalgia and longing, and that this shared sentiment rooted in Chinese culture naturally built an emotional bridge between audiences on both sides of the Strait — a single plain word of farewell can stir the homesickness of compatriots across the Strait.

The Taiwan film delegation led by Chu Yen-ping watched the film in full, and several producers and directors were moved to tears afterward. Producer Li Yaohua said he was deeply inspired, declaring that the film broke the industry's entrenched mindset that "you need star traffic to sell tickets," proving that a quality script and sincere performances can fully power a box office hit.

Win-Win

"Touring Chaoshan With the Film" Sparks a Tourism Boom

The producers, together with China Film Digital, issued an official announcement that the digital key for "A Love Letter to Grandma" has been extended a second time, pushing its nationwide theatrical run to June 30 — making it one of the year's few small- and mid-budget films to have its run extended twice. Drawing on its consistently high attendance and long-term reputation, the producers simultaneously rolled out a charity screening program, offering discounted special screenings for overseas Chinese hometowns, senior universities and colleges across the country, further widening coverage of potential audiences such as the elderly and students, and tapping the remaining box office potential.

With the key extension in place and word of mouth continuing to spread, the two major professional box office platforms Maoyan and Dengta both raised their final box office forecasts, lifting the previous projection of 1.6 billion yuan to 1.8 billion yuan. Several leading film and television institutions optimistically predicted that, given favorable conditions such as few major releases ahead of the June summer season and lasting buzz, the film could in the best case challenge the 2 billion yuan mark. From a long-term perspective, the film's weekday box office decline has stayed within 10%, far outperforming new releases over the same period, demonstrating a strong long-tail earning ability.

Notably, the film's success has sparked a "Touring Chaoshan With the Film" tourism boom, with foot traffic at filming locations such as Shantou's Little Park, the Longhu Ancient Village, Jieyang's Mianhu Old Street and the Qifeng Chen Ancestral Hall surging 300% from the previous period. Shantou's culture and tourism authorities have built an immersive *qiaopi*-tracing tourism route around the film's IP, and the owners of two century-old private overseas Chinese residences have opened their courtyards free of charge for visitors. At one filming landmark, single-day weekend visitors peaked at more than 5,000, achieving a two-way win-win of "film empowering tourism, tourism giving back to the film."

Reported by Southern Metropolis Daily reporter Chen Zeran

Source: Southern Metropolis Daily — https://www.163.com/dy/article/KUL2H4MM05129QAF.html?f=post2020_dy_recommends