在新加坡华语电影节看《人生海海》，导演廖克发在放映后和观众交流，全场满座，气氛热烈。片中的场景、笑点、张力，观众几乎不需要任何铺垫，已经自然融入情境。
三个星期后，我在山西太原看《给阿嬷的情书》。据说这部片子在中国大陆是票房黑马，口碑爆红。不过那一晚，整间放映厅只有我和朋友三人，宛如包场。平时很少听见的潮汕话对我格外新鲜，可惜没有空调，我忍者闷热，边看电影边赶蚊子，又是奇特的体验。
两部电影都与华人南洋移民有关，呈现着不同的媒介与叙事逻辑。《人生海海》的核心媒介，是一具遗体。《给阿嬷的情书》的核心媒介，是一叠泛黄的书信——侨批。学者常用"离散（diaspora）"的概念套用在海外华人，仿佛飘洋过海，出国打拼，就自然带着乡愁与归根的渴望，然而这两部电影，恰恰在松动这种想象。
《人生海海》中，不知道父亲生前因为再婚，已经改信回教的兄弟俩，半夜去穆斯林墓园“偷回”父亲的遗体，被墓园警卫发现追赶，抬着遗体逃跑，跌跌撞撞，没想到遗体滚落丢失，他们认为是父亲要躲起来不让他们找到，也就放弃无所谓了。反讽似的，此时天空绽放璀璨的烟火，荒谬地扫清死亡的悲伤。
落叶要归根吗？根在哪里？电影里的台词说到：“根长在自己身上”，所以不必外寻。生活在有拿督公信仰和伊斯兰文明的马来西亚，一代代的华人落地生根，磨砺出随遇而安的心态。
《给阿嬷的情书》里面的“情书”侨批，又称“银信”，是1979年银行业务完善以前，华人从东南亚汇款回乡时附带的家书，既是情感的载体，也是跨海金融的凭证。相较于《人生海海》的无厘头诙谐，黑色幽默，《给阿嬷的情书》穿插了念书信的温馨缠绵和戏中人物的直爽明快，触发观众的情绪起伏及共鸣。
这是一个埋藏了18年的善意谎言。在泰国长大的谢南枝假扮已经意外过世的郑木生，持续给他的妻子叶淑柔写信和寄钱，直到叶淑柔的孙子到曼谷寻亲，才得知真相。所以电影题目的“阿嬷”，是用孙子的口吻称呼叶淑柔，北方人叫奶奶，潮汕和闽南人叫“阿嬷”，我很熟悉这样的表达。有趣的是，电影字幕的英文翻译，把“阿嬷”直接音译为“Ama”,不知道看英文字幕的观众能不能够理解。后来听说有人们争论“阿嬷”的“嬷”字应该怎么读，才注意到中国南北的差异。也许正由于我看的是潮汕话而不是普通话配音版，当天才缺乏其他观众吧。
情书，本是私密的，侨批历来有人代写，当代书者介入，将委托人的口语转为文字，便成为半公开的抒情。作为郑木生“替身”的谢南枝，是连接“木”和“叶”（淑柔）的中间守护者，让我联想汉代古诗十九首中《行行重行行》的“胡马依北风，越鸟巢南枝”，她家经营的旅店，正是过番南洋的打工人暂时栖居的巢。
《人生海海》的英文片名是“The Waves Will Carry Us”，很有随波逐流的放逸，我觉得比起“离散”的孤单无依，更合乎当下的情形。移动与漂流，已经是许多人的生活日常。我们有时停靠某一个港湾，落户安家；有时又因为理想、生计，或各种偶然机缘，再度启程。认同不是单一的，身份是可变的，只有自己能定义自己，不需要他人来贴标签。
《给阿嬷的情书》里的侨批，本质是联系亲友家人，但是谢南枝的角色提醒我们：真正将两地连接起来的，未必只是血缘与乡情，更可能是陌生人之间的义气，以及书写所创造的情感纽带。
在人生之海漂流，只要有人牵挂着你，无论是语音、照片、视频还是文字，那都是弥足珍贵的情书。
2026年6月20日，新加坡《联合早报》“上善若水”专栏
Love Letters Adrift on Life’s Sea
I Lo-fen
I watched The Waves Will Carry Us at the Singapore Chinese Film Festival. After the screening, director Lau Kek Huat spoke with the audience. The theatre was full, and the atmosphere was lively. The scenes, humour, and dramatic tension in the film needed almost no explanation; the audience entered naturally into its world.
Three weeks later, I watched Dear You in Taiyuan, Shanxi. I had heard that the film had become a surprise box-office hit in mainland China, with word of mouth spreading rapidly. Yet that evening, there were only three people in the entire cinema: my friend, another companion, and me. It felt almost like a private screening. The Teochew dialect, which I seldom hear in everyday life, sounded especially fresh to me. Unfortunately, there was no air-conditioning. I endured the stuffy heat, watching the film while swatting mosquitoes. That, too, became a rather peculiar experience.
Both films are related to Chinese migration to Nanyang, yet they present very different media and narrative logics. The central medium of The Waves Will Carry Us is a dead body. The central medium of Dear You is a stack of yellowed letters—qiaopi. Scholars often apply the concept of “diaspora” to overseas Chinese, as if crossing the sea and leaving home to seek a livelihood naturally meant carrying homesickness and a longing to return to one’s roots. Yet these two films quietly unsettle that imagination.
In The Waves Will Carry Us, two brothers, unaware that their father had converted to Islam after remarrying, go to a Muslim cemetery in the middle of the night to “steal back” his body. Discovered and chased by a cemetery guard, they stagger away carrying the corpse. Unexpectedly, the body rolls off and disappears. They decide that perhaps their father is hiding because he does not want to be found, and so they simply give up. Ironically, at that very moment, brilliant fireworks burst across the sky, absurdly sweeping away the sorrow of death.
Must fallen leaves return to their roots? Where, after all, are one’s roots? A line in the film says: “Roots grow on one’s own body.” There is therefore no need to search for them elsewhere. Living in Malaysia, a society shaped by Datuk Gong beliefs and Islamic civilization, generations of Chinese have put down roots where they are, gradually cultivating an attitude of adapting to circumstances and making peace with wherever life takes them.
The “love letters” in Dear You are qiaopi, also known as “silver letters.” Before banking services became more developed in 1979, overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia sent remittances back home together with family letters. These letters were both carriers of emotion and documents of transoceanic finance. Compared with the absurd comedy and dark humour of The Waves Will Carry Us, Dear You interweaves the tender warmth of letters being read aloud with the frank and lively temperaments of its characters, stirring the audience’s emotions and sense of resonance.
This is a kind-hearted lie buried for eighteen years. Xie Nanzhi, who grew up in Thailand, pretends to be Zheng Musheng, who has died in an accident, and continues to write letters and send money to Zheng’s wife, Ye Shurou. Only when Ye Shurou’s grandson travels to Bangkok in search of his relative does the truth come to light. The “Ama” in the film title is therefore the way the grandson addresses Ye Shurou. In northern China, she would be called nainai; in Teochew and Minnan, she is called Ama. I am very familiar with this form of address. Interestingly, the English subtitles render “阿嬷” directly as “Ama.” I wonder whether viewers relying on the English subtitles would be able to understand it. Later, I heard that some people were debating how the character “嬷” in “阿嬷” should be pronounced, and only then did I notice the difference between northern and southern Chinese usage. Perhaps it was precisely because the version I watched was in Teochew rather than dubbed in Mandarin that there were so few other viewers that day.
A love letter is, by nature, private. Yet qiaopi were historically often written by others on behalf of the sender. Once a professional letter writer intervened, transforming the sender’s spoken words into written text, the letter became a semi-public form of lyric expression. As Zheng Musheng’s “substitute,” Xie Nanzhi is the guardian who connects “Mu” and “Ye”—wood and leaf. This reminds me of the lines from “Xing xing chong xing xing” in the Han-dynasty Nineteen Old Poems: “The Hu horse leans toward the north wind; the Yue bird nests on the southern branch.” The inn run by her family is precisely such a temporary nest for workers who crossed the sea to Nanyang.
The English title of 人生海海 is The Waves Will Carry Us. It conveys a sense of drifting freely with the waves. To me, this is closer to the condition of the present than the loneliness and helplessness implied by “diaspora.” Movement and drifting have already become part of everyday life for many people. Sometimes we moor in a harbour and build a home; at other times, because of ideals, livelihood, or various accidents of fate, we set off once again. Identity is not singular. It is changeable. Only we can define ourselves; we do not need others to label us.
The qiaopi in Dear You are, in essence, a means of connecting relatives and family members. Yet the character of Xie Nanzhi reminds us that what truly connects two places may not be bloodline or nostalgia alone. It may also be the loyalty of strangers, and the emotional bonds created through writing.
As we drift upon the vast sea of life, as long as someone keeps us in their thoughts—whether through voice messages, photographs, videos, or words—each of these is a precious love letter.
Published in the “Shangshan Ruoshui” column of Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao, June 20, 2026.
