Young creators reclaim human connection

Young Chinese creators, starting from small personal experiences, are enriching people's understanding of the world, says Xu Zhiyuan, one of the foundation's initiators.

Lu's work, for example, records how ordinary people reinvent their lives, Xu says, and it contains many warm, simple things he particularly loves.

"I hope the foundation will continue to support such creators not only for their imaginations but also their passion and curiosity for people," he adds.

Eight years ago, when the Sailors Program launched, they wanted to support writers willing to travel and see the world from a Chinese perspective.

At a time when China was rapidly globalizing, Xu found few Chinese authors traveling and writing about countries such as India and Egypt. As a result, China's understanding of the world lacked sufficient depth and complexity.

As a person obsessed with travel writing, Xu says he wanted to support young, curious Chinese people. Gradually, the projects the foundation has supported have diversified in genres, expanding from writing to visual art, installations, and more.

"If we can continue supporting two or three generations, this program will provide an interesting platform that shows how China sees the world," he says.

Speaking of the support, Lu says, "Being selected for the Sailors Program made me re-evaluate my creations. I gradually realized that it might not just be a personal interest but could also be taken seriously as a form of creation, entering a broader public arena to be seen and discussed."

Another "sailor", Cui Yuxuan, devotes her ongoing art project Drawn in Captivity (Chapter One) to tracing the wartime experience of Dutch Major General H. J. D. de Fremery, who was transported as a Japanese prisoner of war from Southeast Asia to Northeast China during World War II.

The project originates from a secretly drawn sketchbook he created in the POW camp, documenting the forced labor and relocations of prisoners between 1942 and 1945, spanning Java, Sumatra, Singapore, Northeast China, and the Philippines. The artist encountered these images in a WWII database called Image Bank WW2 from a Dutch institute of war documentation , discovering that Cheng Chia Tun (Zhengjiatun), a railway town near Cui's hometown, was an overlooked node in a global wartime network.

The work unfolds as an open research site, combining two-channel video, archival materials and photography that trace the artist's investigation along De Fremery's transfer route.