At the Beach is a portrait of agenerational conflict that only increases as satellite cities spring up throughout China, so that urbanizationimpacts even the remotest corners. The story focuses on two sexually curious teenage girls whosefisherman fathers have traditional marriages in mind for them, but who awaken to a world of possibilitiesin their forays into the new city and in their work at the factory. The aging fishermen meanwhile complainthat the encroaching town has spoiled their fishing grounds and ruined an ancient and treasured relationshipto the environment. The film is as much as anything a mood piece laying out a problem in cinematic terms:the beach at dawn is monochromatic, mud-colored, horizontal; by contrast, the factory rises gleaming andcolorful and cold in the heat of day. And if, in the ramshackle beach houses, tradition holds its gnarled gripon relationships, in the factory, love and friendship are also haunted by the spectre of social propriety andparanoia. Teng Wenji locates our compassion in the ambiguous person of a retarded boy, the product ofgenerations of intermarriage by ignorant peasants, yet an affirmation of life worth preserving as he dancesalong the shoreline.