In Edward Yang’s That Day, on the Beach (Hai tan de yi tian), the pursuit of happiness is not simply asked; it is interrogated, dissected, and ultimately left unresolved. The film is more than a family drama; it reflects a society suspended between the weight of tradition and the promise of modernity.
Set against the backdrop of post-1949 Taiwan, where the Kuomintang (KMT) government imposed its values on an island already rich with its own culture, That Day, on the Beach explores how two siblings, Jiaseng (Tso Ming-Hsiang) and Jiali (Sylvia Chang), navigate their father’s suffocating expectations. This man equates family honor with personal sacrifice.
For Jiaseng, adulthood means obedience: sacrificing dreams for his father’s vision. His method is not one of action but of silent resignation, a slow erasure of his desires. Compliance defines his existence, a life where the possibility of happiness he once experienced becomes a distant memory.
The Kuomintang’s arrival in Taiwan in 1949 brought a wave of mainland Chinese refugees and their values to an island with an established cultural identity. The authoritarian rule of the KMT extended beyond politics and into the domestic sphere, where family honor, obedience, and sacrifice became virtues. For Jiaseng and Jiali’s father, Weiqing (Terry Hu), success is a personal achievement and a fortress built against the chaos of displacement. His ambitions are an extension of his belief that the family must be strong, unified, and above all, obedient.
Jiaseng is the first to bear the weight of this ideology. Forced to abandon his love for Weiqing and marry a woman his father chose, his life becomes a quiet tragedy. His is not just a sacrifice of personal happiness but a surrender to a cultural ethos that demands filial obedience over individual desire. His compliance is a mask of maturity that hides a deep, unspoken sorrow.
Jiali, his younger sister, represents a spirit of defiance. She chooses Dewei (David Mao), a man who promises her freedom and love, and leaves her family’s suffocating grip. Her escape, however, is not a liberation. Over time, Dewei becomes distant, cold, and authoritarian—a reflection of the very figure he once despised. Jiali’s dream of love dissolves into disillusionment, her search for happiness becomes a struggle against the inevitable.
Still, Jiali is not spared from patriarchal oppression. She, too, is forced to abandon her lover and marry for family honor. Unlike her brother, who surrenders to their father’s authority without question, Jiali asks him a question that cuts through his facade: “Are you happy?” His response—an empty claim of finding “small joys” in life—echoes with a loud silence. His dinner table is heavy with uncomfortable unspokenness, and his life is a study in resignation.
Edward Yang’s film is a hushed symphony of love and loss, where happiness is not a destination but ever-elusive. Jiaseng believes he has made the right choices, yet his life is a monument to regret. He survives his father, but not the weight of his compliance. When he questions his past, he is too weary to change, and his life ends as a whispered answer to Jiali’s question—a silence that speaks of everything he has lost.
Jiali, by contrast, fights for a life of her own. Watching Jiaseng’s mute collapse, she vows not to live in regret. But dreams prove fragile. Dewei’s sudden disappearance shatters her final illusions, a brutal reminder that even the most ardent love can dissolve without warning. Yet it is in this darkness that she finds a strange resilience. As Weiqing suggests, Dewei’s absence may be the beginning of Jiali’s growth. Unlike Jiaseng, who is haunted by what he could not become, Jiali is defined by her willingness to let go.
Edward Yang’s Cinematic Language: Silence and Space
Edward Yang’s visual style is a poetry of stillness and absence. His camera lingers, capturing the quiet suffocation of family dinners and the vast empty spaces that mirror the void within his characters. In Jiaseng’s world, silence is a prison, reflecting his unspoken regret. For Jiali, it is a mirror, where she confronts her own disillusionment.
The urban landscape of Taipei is a paradox: a city that promises freedom but often delivers isolation. For Jiaseng, it is a maze without an exit, a world of obligations that swallow his dreams. For Jiali, it is a stage where love is found and lost, where even the brightest day can hide the deepest shadows. The film’s title, That Day, on the Beach, is a cruel irony; what should be a memory of warmth is instead a reminder of distance, a happiness always just out of reach.
The film’s exploration of family is deeply rooted in Taiwan’s cultural context. The patriarchal control exerted by Jiaseng and Jiali’s father is a microcosm of the broader societal expectations of filial piety and family honor. Yet this traditional value system is at odds with the younger generation’s desire for individuality. Jiaseng’s submission mirrors the authoritarian values that shaped post-war Taiwan, while Jiali’s disobedience symbolizes the struggle for personal freedom in a world where conformity is demanded.
What Is Happiness?
That Day, on the Beach asks a simple, painful question: What is happiness? For Jiaseng, it is a question he can never answer; a distant memory, a shadow cast by choices he can no longer change. For Jiali, it is a question she continues to chase, not with certainty, but with persistence.
Edward Yang’s film is a meditation on the tension between dreams and reality, on the weight of tradition and the pain of loss. He does not offer solutions. In a world where love is fragile and happiness elusive, Jiali’s resilience suggests that happiness may not be a matter of what we possess, but of what we learn to release.
That Day on the Beach is a portrait of a world where dreams dissolve, where even the brightest days are tinged with shadows. Yet in that darkness, there is a quiet hope, a sense that even as we lose, we learn, and even as we let go, we grow.