In less than two months, the indie film Dear You has become an unlikely mass hit. Shot in the Teochew language from the Chaoshan region of southern China’s Guangdong province, the movie follows a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance letters sent home from Thailand. As he pieces together his grandfather’s life story, the movie also explores Chinese migration to the region and the diaspora’s struggle to preserve its heritage. In one scene, an elderly schoolmaster risks arrest in...

A series of emergency management and local government officials in central China’s Hunan province have come under investigation following a catastrophic fireworks factory explosion that killed 37 people last month. The provincial discipline inspection commission announced on Thursday that three senior figures within the emergency management system were under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law”. The officials are Lei Min, deputy director of the safety production emergency...