A Chinese box office hit sparks a debate about identity in Singapore
The sleeper hit was filmed almost entirely in Teochew, a language from China's Chaoshan region which is still spoken among older generations of Chinese in South East Asia.But when the movie hit Singaporean cinemas this month, many were dismayed to learn that most of the screenings would be dubbed into Mandarin - the lingua franca of China and one of Singapore's four official languages, along with English."Being Teochew, watching it in Teochew makes it even more special," says Wu Silin, a church worker. She and her mother watched Dear You last week, after snagging tickets to one of just eight special Teochew screenings. The tickets reportedly sold out in less than two hours.When the film is being screened in its original language in China, why not in Singapore, where Teochew is still spoken by many among the older generation of ethnic Chinese? That's what many locals are asking.The film has inadvertently sparked a debate over the government's long-standing push for Chinese Singaporeans to speak Mandarin instead of other languages, or what they call dialects, from China.What began as an attempt to unify the Chinese community in Singapore has proven so effective that, some argue, it has driven dialects like Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka into an irreversible decline.
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