Director Sung Hsin-yin partly based On Happiness Road on her own experiences, growing up in Taipei and later moving to both Japan and the United States. Her protagonist Chi returns from the US to Taiwan when her grandmother dies. As she is confronted with a changed society and cityscape, her memories of her childhood are seamlessly interwoven into the narrative through the lively, colourful animation. Her grandmother was from the countryside and of indigenous origin, which causes some kids to…

While the divide between Taiwan’s indigenous people, mostly living in the countryside, and the Chinese people that came to redefine the country, mostly in the nineteenth and twentieth century, plays only a small part in On Happiness Road, it is featured front and center in the sometimes hilarious Hang in There, Kids!. Three young indigenous boys live in the side of a mountain in the picturesque Sqoyaw reserve. While their cheerful antics are warmly filmed by Laha Mebow, herself of…