Is it possible to use emacsclient remotely?

Question

I'd like to use emacsclient on my laptop to connect to an emacs server on my desktop.

I think I know that the emacs server process listens to a unix socket in "/tmp/emacs${UID}".

So I need to make a connection between a unix socket in laptop:/tmp/emacs${UID}/socat to desktop:/tmp/emacs${UID}/server.

I can make a socket locally with socat. I have tested:

socat -v UNIX-LISTEN:/tmp/emacs${UID}/socat UNIX-CONNECT/tmp/emacs${UID}/server
emacsclient -nw -s socat .

That works.

So now I need to connect socat to server on the remote host...

desktop:
socat -v TCP-LISTEN:7777 UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/emacs${UID}/server
laptop:
socat -v UNIX-LISTEN:/tmp/emacs${UID}/socat TCP-CONNECT:127.0.0.1:9999
ssh -L9999:127.0.0.1:7777 desktop
emacsclient -nw -s socat .

I can successfully route traffic over this setup. I know this because my home directory is different on my laptop, and the socat on the desktop is dumping out laptop-home-directory-related paths.

However, the emacsclient process on my laptop doesn't draw a frame.

Is there a way to make this work?

Edit: xuchunyang writes:

By the way, we don't need emacsclient to use the Emacs server, echo '- 
eval emacs-version' | nc -U /path/to/emacs/socket works as well.

I can confirm that connecting to the socket on the laptop works:

laptop $ echo '-eval emacs-version' | nc -U /tmp/emacs248200/socat 
-emacs-pid 184752
-print "26.3"
$

Answer 1

rpluim suggests trying emacsclient-over-tcp.

Adding an answer in order to have formatting available.

Setup

Desktop

(setq server-use-tcp t                                                                                                                                                                   
      server-host "127.0.0.1"                                                                                                                                                                
      server-port 6666                                                                                                                                                                       
      server-auth-dir "~/.emacs.d/server"                                                                                                                                                
      server-auth-key 
"qTq/]3a$2@hmszaxJl{XvRn~9mBh,34O$8L>WS1TD%&8g*roC#Xck)9Lg]M*}\\z")
(server-start)

Laptop

scp desktop:~/.emacs.d/server/server ~/.emacs.d/server/server
ssh -L 6666:127.0.0.1:6666 desktop
emacsclient -nw -f ~/.emacs.d/server/server .

Result:

The emacsclient call hangs after connecting (exactly the same behaviour as seen trying to tunnel the unix socket). There is a connection to port 6666 on the laptop.