Capturing art's enduring power in the era of AI

Pursuing authenticity

Another recurring theme at the forum was the importance of maintaining sincerity with audiences and grounding stories in real life.

Director Lan Hongchun, best known for the recent hit Dear You, says during the Forum on High-Quality Development of the Film Industry, held alongside the literature forum on May 22, that "pure, authentic and warm local stories will always have the power to move people's hearts".

The film, which concludes Lan's trilogy about families from the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province, follows the daughter of a Chinese-Thai hostel owner who spends 18 years sending money and letters to the widow of a deceased family friend who once saved her father from an arson attack. The man, a Chaoshan native who fled his hometown to avoid forced conscription by the Kuomintang, was later killed in Thailand while trying to stop gangsters from robbing a fishing boat. To spare his widow the pain, the woman hides the truth and continues writing letters in his name.

Lan says the film marks a departure from his comfort zone, as he sought to realistically portray the history and lives of overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia.

To prepare for the production, he and his team traveled extensively, interviewing nearly 300 overseas Chinese families across Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States. Their research uncovered a wealth of historical details, ranging from the price of a movie ticket in 1960s Thailand to the era's licensing rules governing tricycle operators.

One of the film's emotional highlights is the featuring of qiaopi — remittance letters sent home by Chinese laborers who left China's southeastern coast to work abroad between the 19th and 20th centuries. Carrying homesickness, longing and familial affection, the letters have deeply resonated with audiences, especially when paired with the film's original version spoken in the Chaoshan dialect.

In an earlier review, Gao Shiming, vice-president of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, reflects on the emotional power of qiaopi, noting that more than 30 million such letters are estimated to have reached China over 150 years.

"Many of those who sent and received these letters could neither read nor write, yet the scribes they hired transformed ordinary daily matters and heartfelt concerns into elegant, meticulous and deeply moving words," Gao writes.

More importantly, he adds, qiaopi embodies not only separation and longing, but also the hardships and livelihoods of overseas Chinese laborers. Combining remittances with personal correspondence, the letters often carried small sums of money saved through frugal living abroad — funds that represented hope for buying rice, oil, salt, and firewood for family members left behind.

Veteran screenwriter He Jiping pushes the discussion further at the literature forum by emphasizing the deeper responsibility of artistic creation. Nearly four decades ago, He, already an acclaimed playwright, left Beijing to reunite with her family in Hong Kong, where she expanded from stage writing into film and television screenwriting.

In 1991, director Tsui Hark was drawn to her celebrated stage play The First House Under Heaven, and invited her to write the screenplay for New Dragon Gate Inn, the martial arts classic about swordsmen battling a ruthless eunuch and his henchmen in the remote desert during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

The screenwriter reveals that her grounding in traditional Chinese culture and previous years living on the Loess Plateau in northwestern China inspired her to break away from the lush landscapes commonly associated with wuxia (martial arts) films. Instead, she chose the desert setting of shifting sands, which later became one of the movie's most distinctive visual elements.

Now 75, He remains demanding of her own writing. She says it is not enough for a script to simply offer a compelling story or memorable characters. "A good work should leave audiences carrying contemplation with them, not just applause, when they walk out of the theater," quoting the late playwright, Cao Yu.

She adds that writers also need what she calls a "second pair of eyes" — the ability to observe human nature from a broader perspective. Such awareness, she says, allows storytellers to infuse their works with greater humanity, emotional depth and lasting resonance.