From "Communicative Memory" to "Cultural Memory" ——The Value Transformation and Inheritance of Qiaopi Memory in the Film A
Letter to Grandma
Li Liling
[Abstract] In 2013, the "Qiaopi Archives — Overseas Chinese Remittance and Letters" was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, gaining international recognition at the institutional level. The Chaoshan-dialect film A Letter to Grandma, released in 2026, takes Qiaopi as its core narrative medium. Through a family story spanning half a century, it revitalizes Qiaopi — a historical document that had long remained confined to academic research and archival exhibitions — as a cultural object of social attention. This paper adopts Jan Assmann's theory of "communicative memory — cultural memory" as its basic framework, combined with research on emotional communication, to explore how the film uses visual narrative to transform Qiaopi from a communicative memory within family life into a cultural memory with public significance. The paper argues that the film does not create new cultural memory, but rather, through character narration, the construction of local space,and emotional expression, performs an "emotional valorization" of existing cultural memory, transforming historical documents from objects of knowledge into objects of emotion, thereby promoting the public dissemination of local culture. Through cinematic emotional shaping, cross-media communication, and cultural tourism linkage, the film constructs a new path of "activation — resonance — inheritance," offering practical insights for the emotional value turn in local cultural communication.
[Keywords] Qiaopi; A Letter to Grandma; Memory of the World Heritage; Cultural Memory;Emotional Valorization
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