Over the past twenty-four months, TONG has been forced to reflect and adapt to changing times. The upheaval for many in our industry has spurred us to rethink our processes and partnerships as a business operating across creative, technology, arts and culture. As many of us push on across post-Covid, inter-Covid and peak-Covid realities existing in parallel, we find inspiration in the Tiger for bravery, confidence and a sign of new beginnings.

‘Spring Creators 创造·春’ is an annual program dedicated to supporting five young Chinese talents around the world in their personal projects across music, fashion design, art, digital animation and more. Each creator receives £500 in funding. Throughout the year, we will be keeping in close contact with our creators as they manifest their ambitions.

Upon completion at the end of the year, TONG will provide a platform to showcase all projects alongside opportunities to work on commercial briefs. As an organisation that informs and connects others with Chinese society and culture, we understand that many at the beginning of their journey are currently facing challenges and setbacks.

Aileen Ye is an Irish-Chinese self-taught filmmaker from Dublin. Ye graduated with an MSc in Sociology from Erasmus University Rotterdam, with a research focus on decolonising the aesthetics of moving-images.

Having a background in 16mm filmmaking, she creates works that reveal entangled narratives and complex social structures about Asian diasporas, immigrants, and heritage. She encourages audiences to consider how stories from the periphery are informed and misinformed by socio-political structures and uses experimental formats to highlight the ‘experimentality’ of life.

Her project in the works is a film labelled ‘Beast’, a personal expression of the ‘immigrant experience’ and a letter of tribute, forgiveness and beauty in our ever-growing multicultural lives. The film will showcase two figures symbolising the clash between modernity and tradition, colonised and imported heritage, and the feeling of cultural displacement amongst the ESEA diaspora. Touching on themes of coexistence, exclusion and solidarity, ‘Beast’ will premiere October 2022.

Dot Zhihan Jia works as the associate curator at CFCCA (Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art). Previously she was a lecturer in critical studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her academic, curatorial, and creative work focuses on decolonial, feminist modes of storytelling and togetherness. She is a working group member of the Feminist Duration Reading Group and the co-founder of Chán magazine.

Chán magazine is a publication is dedicated to the Sinophone immigrants in the UK, including but not limited to the often invisible working-class female immigrants. The overarching theme for this publication is Food, for it is both personal and relational. For the second issue of Chán supported by TONG, readers are asked to submit a recipe of food that cures to highlight the power of food and what it means for the displaced individuals: healing the homesickness by preserving the taste of home.

Jiaying Gao is a second-year PhD student in Visual Culture, Programme Advanced Practice in Goldsmiths University, London, UK. Her work investigates the intersection of the body, perception, archivals, and trying to create different modules of Dance museums.

Her research experience extends across the fields of Chinese dance, cultural and ethnic policies, and their impact on social and economic development at local, national and international levels.

When the show is over, what is the fate of its costumes? ‘Choreo Archive: Re-Making Your Archive’ is an archive project driven by a sense that the institution was failing the artists’ dance collection; the lighting and costume and even body needed to be recognised as a counter-institution.

With curation incorporating materials, installations and multiple levels of digital immersive technology, body movements and interactivity create a dialogic relationship between dance and audiences.

Nozomi Tolworthy is a BA Film graduate working across creative mediums such as film and photography alongside diversity & inclusion roles. Since the pandemic, restrictions imposed for travel to Hong Kong and opportunities to collaborate with peers on creative projects have proved challenging.

Inspired to reflect inward during lonely periods, she produced a short documentary film reflecting on her own cross-cultural journey and heritage; providing a sense of solace and curiosity to dig deeper into themes of alienness and acceptance that mixed individuals may feel.

‘Mixed Feelings’ is a hybrid project; part community, part platform and part documentary created by this artist exploring ideas of belonging from a mixed race/multi-ethnic perspective. The film will draw on her Hong Kong Chinese, Japanese and white-British heritage and convey experiences of growing up in Hong Kong before moving to the UK.

Using her own story to open conversation about multiple heritages she boldly queries her growing network ‘what does it mean to be mixed?’ to catalyse a wider dialogue that is uncomfortable and rewarding.

Ying Qi is a Chinese film director, producer, and educator based in New York City and Shanghai, China. She is currently an M.A. candidate in Arts Politics at the Tisch School of Arts, New York University. She leverages film production and visual arts disciplines to create works focusing on the discourses of identity politics, intersectionality, social justice, and gender-based violence.

‘Wǒmen in war’ is a visual artists and installation project interrogating the motivations behind wars that shake families across the world. (In Chinese, ‘women’ is pronounced ‘wǒmen’ – meaning we or us, a statement of collective power.)

Whether it is an irrational human territorial invasion, or a non-human biological war, or a data war in cyberspace, her work reveals the reality and the proximity to which humans exist with wars played out in every single moment. This on-going project has evolved and will be debuting for its second chapter in New York June 27 at All Street New York.