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< Back Ron Yuan A Life Like a Serenade: Ron Yuan and the Integrity of Transformation Images Provided by Ron Yuan A life like a serenade does not unfold in a straight line, and neither has Ron Yuan’s — especially as an Asian American actor coming of age when faces like his were rare on screen. His career has never been a sprint toward celebrity, but a slow, stubborn composing of a life in the arts: a boy slipping off to rehearsals in New York, a working actor forcing open space in rooms that were not built with him in mind, a performer who disappears so completely into each role that audiences often do not realize they have been watching the same man. Along the way, he has been soldier and prince, doctor and gangster, weapons engineer and emperor — and, in The Mongol Khan, Archug Khan, a ruler whose power is measured not only in conquest but in conscience. Through it all, Yuan keeps his focus on the work itself: craft over noise, integrity over image, each performance another quiet note in a serenade that has lasted a lifetime. When Ron Yuan arrived in Mongolia to prepare for Mongol Khan, he was stepping into one of the production’s central roles: Archug Khan, the ruler he would go on to portray in the Singapore staging of the play in 2024. What he encountered was a production of extraordinary scale, one he later described as “like Cirque du Soleil meets Shakespeare.” It was not simply a return to the stage after years of screen work, but a return to a part of himself — the New York theater child who had first learned to love performance as a living, physical act of commitment. At the center of that experience was Yuan’s performance as Archug Khan — a leader burdened by duty, betrayal, and the painful consequences of power. In Yuan’s telling, Archug was not only a monarch but a moral study: a man trying to lead honorably while navigating incomplete truths, emotional wounds, and the consequences of trust. That tension makes the role a fitting entry point into Yuan’s broader artistic life, one defined not by spectacle alone, but by discipline, humility, and a rare fidelity to craft. What emerges in conversation is not simply the portrait of a veteran actor, but of a genuine artist — one whose career has been built on integrity rather than self-display, and on a willingness to disappear completely into the demands of the work. The Heart of Power In Mongol Khan, Yuan played Archug Khan, a ruler whose authority is tested by deception, loyalty, and the moral consequences of judgment. Yuan was drawn to the role not because it offered grandeur, but because it offered contradiction. “I found it very exciting,” he says. “For me, a chance to, like, provide more layers for a character.” Rather than flattening the ruler into an emblem of authority, he sought to reveal the emotional currents underneath the crown. “I think by grounding yourself in the true emotions makes him naturally more sympathetic,” Yuan explains. “He has done certain things for love. He has done certain things that he felt were righteous for his nation.” In his hands, Archug becomes a man whose failings are inseparable from his conscience. His errors do not come from indifference, but from the tragic vulnerability of someone trying to act justly in a world shaped by betrayal. That inner code is what most interested Yuan. “He rules from the heart,” he says. It is a phrase that resonates beyond the role itself, because it also describes the values Yuan continues to return to in his own life and work. “If we had leaders that try to rule righteously from the heart and not with alternative motives of greed and other stuff in power,” he reflects, “I think we would all be in a better place globally.” There is nothing cynical in the way he says this. Even while acknowledging that such leadership would still be imperfect, Yuan remains deeply invested in the possibility that strength and sincerity can coexist. That belief gives Archug Khan its emotional force, and it gives Yuan’s performance its quiet gravity. From Invisibility to Presence Yuan’s understanding of power is inseparable from the landscape in which he grew up. As an Asian American kid in Manhattan, he came of age in a media culture where faces like his were scarce. “Yeah. It absolutely fueled me. Absolutely, without a doubt,” he says of that absence. Bruce Lee was one of the first figures to make a profound impression on him, though not simply for martial arts. Yuan speaks of Lee’s presence, his magnetism, and the revelation that he, too, had once been a child actor. He also looked elsewhere for models of dignity and command. “Who was mine? Sidney Poitier,” Yuan says, recalling how many Asian American performers of his generation looked to Black actors as early examples of what centrality on screen could look like. Today, younger generations inherit a different cultural landscape — one with more Asian protagonists, more international crossover, and more visible forms of representation. Yet Yuan remains careful to distinguish visibility from artistic depth. “Don’t ever forget the craft,” he says. For him, the danger is not simply underrepresentation, but a culture that prizes exposure over substance. “The craft is the star, not us,” he says. “So we have to keep feeding it.” The line feels central to his philosophy. In an era increasingly driven by metrics, followers, and image, Yuan continues to insist on the harder, slower work of becoming — not merely appearing. The Work Behind the Image One of the most striking things about Ron Yuan’s body of work is how fully he vanishes into it. With each new role, he does not simply arrive as a recognizable star carrying the same mannerisms from one project to the next. He transforms. The face, the posture, the rhythm, the energy — each becomes so specific to the character that viewers often do not realize they are watching the same actor. Yuan himself acknowledges this pattern with a mixture of humor and acceptance. “A lot of people [say], I didn’t realize that was you,” he says. He adds that he has “always wanted to just be different, look different, do different stuff,” and that this instinct has been so strong that even agents have urged him to keep a more consistent appearance so audiences would recognize him more easily. That is precisely what makes his work so unusual. There are performers who remain fundamentally the same in every role, preserving a familiar persona that travels from project to project. Yuan is not that kind of actor. His gift is transformation, and the record of his screen work makes that plain. He played Master Sgt. Qiang in Disney’s Mulan; Prince Nayan in Netflix’s Marco Polo; Quon Zhang in The Blacklist; Ryu Tom in Sons of Anarchy; Lt. Peter Kang in CBS’s Golden Boy; Dr. Evan Zao in CSI: NY; Yeong, the main weapons engineer, in Independence Day: Resurgence; and David Park in Fast & Furious. Seen together, those roles reveal the scale of his range. He can move from imperial command in Mulan to political intensity in Marco Polo, from procedural sharpness in CSI: NY to menace and unpredictability in Sons of Anarchy, without ever seeming to repeat himself. From the audience’s point of view, that is no small feat. It is an actor’s actor skill: the ability to reshape not only appearance, but presence. That ability is not cosmetic. It reflects rigor, imagination, and a profound respect for character as something to be built from the inside out. The same seriousness shapes his work in action and directing. He speaks of being “very physical” from an early age, combining dramatic performance with dance, stage combat, and choreography. Later, when acting work for Asian American performers remained limited, he designed action sequences to support himself, and in doing so sharpened his understanding of camera, movement, and visual storytelling. “It really educated me on how to shoot,” he says. That education became part of a larger artistic identity. Yuan did not approach choreography as an accessory to performance, but as another dimension of storytelling. He studied framing, learned the language of cinematography, and developed the visual instincts that would help lead him toward directing. What stands out is the continuity of purpose: whether acting, choreographing, or directing, he speaks always from the same place — a commitment to doing the work truthfully and well. That commitment is still visible in his present-day work. In May 2026, Yuan and his brother Roger were featured by the Directors Guild of America’s Asian American Committee in “Filming the Impossible: A Celebration of Asian Action Filmmakers,” where they spoke about best practices for directing action and presented a live demonstration. The moment feels less like a side note than a continuation of everything the interview reveals: the actor who studied movement, the choreographer who learned framing, and the director who now helps articulate the craft for others. That integrity also extends to the way he talks about Mulan. “We were honored. All of us were honored… to be a part of that project,” he says. He remembers the sense of possibility surrounding the film and the hope that it might mark a cultural turning point. Even when discussing the uneven pace of change in Hollywood, his emphasis remains on continued effort, collective responsibility, and the need to keep creating work of substance. Family, Roots, and the Long Song If Yuan’s public life is defined by transformation, its roots lie in a private struggle for permission. “My family didn’t want me to be an actor, so I couldn’t go to school for it,” he says. Instead, he built his path quietly, taking classes and rehearsing while telling his family he was staying late for schoolwork. His grandparents had envisioned a more traditional future for him — “doctor, politician, architect” — but Yuan already knew, very early, what called to him. “I knew that I wanted to act, since I was really, really young,” he says. That conviction remained intact even when it had to be carried in secret. His reflections on his brother Roger are especially moving. Though both eventually found their way into the industry, Yuan describes a long period in which the two moved through life with a certain emotional distance, shaped by a demanding upbringing and by personal experiences they only later began to share with one another. Only later, in midlife, did that distance begin to dissolve. “We’re closer now than we’ve ever been,” he says. There is a generosity in the way Yuan tells this part of the story. He does not frame family in bitterness, but in complexity — as a place of duty, silence, love, expectation, and eventual recognition. He speaks tenderly of his parents, and of the way his father, especially later in life, became freer to express pride in what his sons had built. “After they left, that was when you could see that my father was happier to freely express… that he was proud of us and what we did.” And then there is the word that hovers over the whole arc of his life: serenade. Yuan reaches for Cyrano de Bergerac when asked what the word means to him. For readers unfamiliar with the story, Edmond Rostand’s classic play centers on Cyrano, a brilliant, eloquent, deeply sensitive man who loves Roxane but believes himself too outwardly unattractive to win her openly. Instead, he lends his words to the handsome but inarticulate Christian, helping another man speak the love Cyrano himself cannot claim. That is why the story moves Yuan so deeply. “Although Cyrano was in love with her, and was in so much pain, but he wanted her to be happy,” he says. For him, that act of giving — of offering language, beauty, and feeling without needing recognition for it — is a form of serenade. The comparison feels unexpectedly exact. So much of Yuan’s career has carried that same quality: a long devotion to the work itself, often without the full recognition that should accompany it, and yet never reduced by that fact. “Was it frustrating on that journey? Oh, hell yeah,” he says with candor. But he does not leave the thought there. “I think it made me stronger. I think it gave me more colors, not just… in my journey of the characters I play, but also in my life.” That may be the clearest way to understand Ron Yuan — not simply as a working actor, or even as a symbol of endurance, but as an artist of uncommon integrity. He transforms without vanity, persists without bitterness, and returns again and again to the values that first shaped him: humility, discipline, depth, and heart. In an industry often drawn to surfaces, that kind of artistry does more than endure. It sings. Ron Yuan for Mulan.JPG Ron Yuan for Ronin.JPG Ron Yuan for Mongol Khan.JPG Ron Yuan for Mulan.JPG 1/8 Images Provided by Ron Yuan Previous Next

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< Back Jeong-hyeon From Dojang to Runway: A Korean Designer Turning Sweat Into Couture Under the harsh white lights of a Seongnam training hall, Jeong‑hyeon was raised to be an elite Taekwondo athlete, his future drawn in straight, disciplined lines toward the national stage. That line snapped with an unexpected injury, exposing a kind of vulnerability no training had prepared him for and leaving him alone with the question of who he could be without the sport that had defined him. In that exposed moment, discipline did not disappear; it quietly reoriented itself toward an unexpected world—fashion—sparked by a simple, disquieting scene: a wardrobe full of discarded uniforms soaked in his sweat and memories. As he began to explore this unforeseen potential, the same rigor that once drove him through drills turned inward, into fabric, structure and “abstracted feathers” carefully carved from cloth. The journey that follows traces how that transformed discipline carried him from the shock of an ended career to the luminous runway of London Fashion Week, where his reinvention now takes shape in motion. When Jeong‑hyeon thinks of his childhood, he doesn’t see sketchbooks or sewing machines. He sees mats, scoreboards and the sharp smell of sweat in Seongnam’s training halls. “My youth was driven by a singular, ambitious goal: becoming an elite Taekwondo athlete. Seongnam is a city of passion for me, defined by the scent of grit from rigorous training and the deep camaraderie of my fellow athletes.” He grew up an only child in a construction family, watching his parents build something out of nothing. “I witnessed firsthand the structural value of creating something from nothing,” he recalls. Long before he drafted a pattern, he was absorbing the logic of foundations, frameworks, weight and balance. After brutal sessions at the athletic middle school, he’d come home to softer rituals. “To balance the physical demands of training, I found solace in listening to music and indulging in desserts. That’s how I nurtured my emotional sensibility.” Then an unexpected injury shattered the life he had trained for. “Being forced to end my athletic career became the most significant turning point of my life.” The path he’d been sprinting down since childhood vanished. What remained was his body, his discipline—and, as it turned out, his clothes. The day the wardrobe spoke The pivot from athlete to designer did not happen in a studio; it happened in front of a wardrobe. One day, he stood staring at rows of Taekwondo uniforms and sportswear, all tailored precisely to his form. “My wardrobe was overflowing with Taekwondo uniforms and athletic gear tailored specifically for me. Seeing so many uniforms being discarded whenever new ones arrived made me pause and reflect.” That reflection crystallized into a question: “I began to wonder, ‘Is there a way to breathe new life into these garments that carry my sweat and memories?’” He now calls that instinct what it was—upcycling. “The instinctive desire to upcycle those worn‑out uniforms ignited a powerful creative spark within me. In that moment, the word ‘fashion’ flashed through my mind like a revelation.” For someone who understood the movement of the body better than anyone, clothing suddenly shifted from equipment to medium. “Clothing became more than just a consumable item. It became an artistic medium capable of rebirth.” That realization “led me away from the arena and into the world of design. It was the definitive starting point of my journey as a designer.” Learning the body all over again On paper, his academic path looks unusual, but in hindsight it feels inevitable. “I am 28 years old and have completed both my undergraduate and graduate studies in Korea. My academic foundation began with a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education, where I gained a profound, firsthand understanding of human anatomy and movement as an elite athlete.” The shift to fashion was not a casual detour; it was a decision made with the same intensity he once brought to competition. “To pursue my long‑held creative ambition, I transitioned into a Master’s program in Fashion Design. Being a non‑fashion major made every moment a challenge, but I dedicated double and triple the effort to my research and technical practice.” He frames that persistence in athletic terms. “I faced the daunting barrier of being a non‑major. I overcame this by tapping into the ‘elite athlete’s perseverance’ that had been ingrained in me since my youth.” In his couture work today, he sees the same lines he once drilled with kicks and forms. “I harmonize the disciplined, sharp ‘lines’ of Taekwondo with the tranquil energy found in art museums to build my own world of Haute Couture. This fusion of athletic resilience and artistic delicacy forms the very foundation of my brand philosophy.” London: a living runway The city he dreams of returning to is not Seoul but London. “It offered a unique creative stimulus, distinct from what I find in Korea. The city’s historic landscape and atmospheric weather, the gentlemanly demeanor of the people and their sophisticated attire—it felt like observing a living runway.” The British Museum left one of the deepest marks. “Witnessing artifacts from across the globe, each carrying its own history, was both fascinating and awe‑inspiring.” Standing in front of objects that had survived millennia reshaped his understanding of what couture could be. “Observing the noble aura and exquisite craftsmanship of these relics reinforced my vision for Haute Couture: creating garments that embody timeless value. The visual memories I gathered in London continue to be a vital resource as I refine the lines and structures of my own designs.” A feather that isn’t a feather If you scroll through his work, one motif repeats: feathers. But he rarely uses the real thing. “The material I value most in my work is, paradoxically, not actual feathers, but ‘abstracted feathers’ that I create entirely from fabric. Instead of using real feathers, I meticulously manipulate and process textiles to craft a texture that is even more dynamic and noble than the real thing.” His tools are deliberately minimal. “In this creative process, the only tools I rely on are the essentials: a sewing machine, a needle, and thread. I believe that with just these three, I can translate any abstract inspiration into a physical silhouette.” Lately, he’s been pushing fabric further. “Recently, I have been focusing on researching unique hand‑stitching techniques to push beyond the visual boundaries of conventional fabrics. This process of crafting entirely new textures from scratch using only fundamental tools—without relying on ready‑made materials—is what truly defines me as an Haute Couture designer.” One piece embodies that philosophy: his green feather dress from Hongik Fashion Week, the graduation work he calls “a deeply personal work that marks my debut as a designer.” “I wanted to encapsulate the inherent ‘freedom’ that feathers represent. I chose a military‑inspired khaki green to evoke a sense of strength and chic sophistication, focusing on the textural contrasts created through meticulous patchwork techniques.” The making of that dress was as demanding as any training camp. “To bridge the gap as a non‑fashion major, I committed myself to a path of relentless discipline.” Under the “detailed guidance and continuous feedback from my professor,” he went through “more than ten fittings” and “spent half a year solely researching the behavior and application of feathers.” The dress, he insists, “was not the result of a quest for instant success, but rather a masterpiece born from embracing and learning from countless failures and revisions.” For him, it is “an embodiment of the ‘unyielding perseverance’ I developed as an elite athlete, combined with the professional milestones set by my mentor.” Failure as data, challenge as training Ask him about difficulty and he answers like a coach. “As a young designer, the greatest challenge I face is bridging the ‘technical gap between vision and reality.’ Starting from a non‑fashion background, translating complex Haute Couture structures from my mind into physical garments often feels like facing a massive wall.” He meets that wall with the mindset he honed on the mat. “I overcome these challenges using the ‘mindset of an elite athlete.’ To an athlete, a slump or a defeat is not an end, but rather analytical data for the next victory. Likewise, I don’t fear failure in the design process; instead, I try to ‘collect’ as many failures as possible.” He circles back to the half‑year he devoted to feather texture as proof. “While the unpredictable movement of the feathers was frustrating, I embraced more than ten fittings and obsessively refined my work based on my professor’s feedback. By focusing on ‘solving today’s failure’ rather than chasing immediate success, I was finally able to complete my signature khaki feather dress.” Then, almost with a smile: “To me, a challenge is a necessary and enjoyable training process to become a more resilient designer.” A mentor’s hand and a global stage At the center of his transformation is his professor, designer Jong‑soo Kim. “The artist who has influenced me the most is my mentor and professor, fashion designer Jong‑soo Kim. As someone who entered the world of fashion from a non‑design background, he taught me the fundamental attitude a designer must possess and the vital importance of technical perfection.” Kim’s influence goes far beyond classroom instruction. “Beyond just teaching design, he guided me to translate the abstract ideas in my mind into physical works of art through the needle and thread. The root of my ‘craftsmanship’—creating new textures from fabric alone and enduring over ten fittings to reach perfection—always lies in his teachings.” Because Kim believed in him, “he gave me the courage to step onto global stages like London Fashion Week. He is a greater artist and an eternal muse to me than any world‑renowned master.” Those lessons have been tested on international platforms. Remembering the Asia Emerging Designer Fashion Contest, he calls it “a defining moment where I tested my potential on a global stage.” Among 1,000 applicants from around the world, “I was selected as one of the 34 finalists and ultimately achieved 3rd place (Bronze Prize).” Again he turned to feathers—“my most confident medium”—but in soft brown and ivory “to maximize elegance.” The upper silhouette created “an optical illusion of a bomber jacket, blending sporty chic with high fashion,” while intricate rope knots between skirt and dress completed “a sophisticated and artistic finish unique to Haute Couture.” London Fashion Week came through a collaboration. “My journey to London Fashion Week was sparked by a collaboration with the global brand Sprayground. Selected as the sole representative from Korea among 15 emerging designers worldwide for the 26 S/S season, I dedicated five months of intense effort to the project.” Of the four outfits he presented, “I made sure to include one iconic dress—the medium I master best and which truly represents my identity as a designer.” Because it was a backpack brand, he “focused on integrating Sprayground’s signature elements and hardware into the structural silhouette of the dress,” fusing “street‑style components with the elegance of Haute Couture.” Watching that dress move down the London runway was “a profound moment I will never forget. I am deeply grateful to Sprayground for believing in my potential; this experience has been instrumental in my growth as a global designer.” Serenade and what comes next If his work had a single title, it might be the word he returns to again and again: Serenade. “To me, ‘Serenade’ is ‘the most sincere confession delivered when the devotion poured out in unseen places finally radiates light.’” As an athlete, “the beads of sweat shed on the field when no one was watching were a desperate serenade to myself.” Now, “I translate that same tenacity and grit into my dresses through the needle and thread.” “The arduous hours spent sculpting the texture of feathers from fabric without using the real thing, and the endurance required for over ten fittings to achieve the perfect silhouette—this process is my own ‘love song’ toward design. When a dress finally shines on the glamorous runway, it becomes a noble and chic serenade dedicated to the world and to the beauty of everyone who wears my creations.” Right now, those serenades are gathering into something larger. “I am currently in the process of establishing my own fashion brand, preparing for the launch of my debut Haute Couture collection. As the Creative Director, I oversee the overall design and the Haute Couture dress line, while my partner manages the daily wear line as we build this business together.” The vision is clear: “We aim to be more than just a clothing company; we aspire to be a fashion house that shares the values of being ‘Noble, Chic, and Lovely.’ My specialized ‘abstracted feather’ technique and structural engineering will serve as the core identity of the brand.” His dream muse is already chosen. “My perfect muse is Jennie from BLACKPINK. She is an icon who perfectly embodies the core values of my brand: ‘Noble, Chic, and Lovely’ all at once.” Her ability “to effortlessly transition between classical elegance and trendy sensibility” mirrors the “limitless beauty” he wants his designs to express. “I dream of seeing individuals with their own confident charm, much like Jennie, discover their most beautiful selves while wearing my creations.” To the next generation, he offers one last line, the same one he repeats to himself when he hits a wall. “Since time will pass anyway, choose to take the challenge,” he urges. “From being a non‑major to standing on a runway in London, what sustained me wasn’t grand confidence, but the boldness to say, ‘Since time is passing anyway, I will give it a try.’” 1/0 Previous Next

< Back Darwin Masbang “Always Be Different”: Darwin Sanchez Masbang’s Harana of Beauty Between Pampanga and Paris Images Provided by Darwin Masbang Darwin Sanchez Masbang didn’t arrive in Paris through a beauty school pipeline or a carefully mapped career plan. He came from Pampanga by way of Dubai and Taiwan, chasing work, supporting family, and stepping into new countries whenever an unexpected door opened. In a small coworking salon in central Paris, this former practical nursing student and pageant kid has turned hair and makeup into his own kind of harana—a Filipino serenade of care and attention offered to a multicultural mix of clients, from French regulars to Asian migrants, each one invited to see themselves as already beautiful before his scissors even touch their hair. Imagine a salon in Paris late in the afternoon, set right on a busy street where the light falls generously on mirrors and glass. The floor around one chair is scattered with cut strands of hair, dark and blond, straight and wavy—small traces of old selves left behind. A client shows her stylist a photo on her phone: a copper‑haired white woman from somewhere on the internet. She wants that color. Behind her stands Darwin Sanchez Masbang, a Kapampangan hair and makeup artist from the Philippines who has made Paris his latest home. He looks at the picture, then at the woman in front of him. Copper, he knows, will not land the same way on her hair and skin. “It’s not for us,” he explains gently. “We are going to look like it’s an unfinished color.” Instead, he offers a shade that respects her natural depth and her reality of “Monday to Sunday” work, a color that can grow out softly without demanding constant maintenance. “You can go with me after six months, if you want, or a year, and then your hair is still okay,” he tells clients like her. “It doesn’t look like any demarcation of anything, it just grows.” For Darwin, this is a kind of modern harana. In Filipino culture, a harana is the traditional serenade: a young man standing beneath a window with a guitar, singing up to the woman he loves, offering his sincerity under the scrutiny of neighbours and family. It is public and vulnerable, a request to be seen and accepted. Darwin’s version is quieter, played out under salon lights rather than the night sky, but the instinct is similar. With each cut and color, he sings a wordless message to the people in his chair: you are already beautiful; let me help you see it in a way that fits your life. From Pampanga to Paris, by Way of Dubai and Taiwan “Obviously, I’m from Philippine,” Darwin says, laughing lightly at the obvious. He grew up in Pampanga, a region known for its rich food culture and strong local identity. When people in the Philippines hear that someone is Kapampangan, they often picture someone who dresses well and carries themselves with a certain confidence. Darwin uses the casual Filipino word porma for this—a slang term that means to be well put‑together in how you dress and present yourself. “We don’t go out, we just go to the church and we know we need to do porma,” he says. “So, he’s from Pampanga, so for sure, he’s going to wear polo.” As the only openly gay sibling in his family, Darwin grew into the role of quiet stylist at home, responsible for brows before church and fresh cuts for his mother. He joined a “group of gay friends” who did hair and makeup for local pageants. “We love pageants,” he recalls. “That’s the time that we’re starting to learn about hair and makeups.” At the same time, he followed a different track on paper: a two‑year practical nursing course, then a job as a sales associate and later supervisor at Crocs Philippines. Ambition pulled him outward early. At nineteen he left for Dubai with his cousin, despite his mother’s worries. “You’re so young. I think it’s difficult for you,” she told him. His reply was simple and stubborn: “I know it myself, I can do it. What’s the difference? It’s just a place that you’re riding an airplane. What’s the difference of going to Manila from Pampanga with a bus?” In Dubai, local norms made salon work difficult; many salons preferred to hire only women to touch female clients’ hair. Darwin turned instead to home‑service work and occasional freelance jobs, sometimes working in gloves that dulled the feel of his scissors and made his movements less precise than he liked. After about a year, another unexpected path opened. He accompanied his cousin to a recruitment interview for jobs in Taiwan; his cousin failed the height check, and on a whim Darwin stepped into the line instead. “We changed clothes, and then it’s me who passed the interview,” he remembers. Taiwan became the setting for his first real salon of his own. While working and studying Chinese—enough to be promoted in his company and act as a bridge between Chinese managers and Filipino workers—he rented a small space. “That’s the time I really started doing real business about salon,” he says. “Before I just do home service, I just do with friends. But my friends told me, I think it’s time for you to step up, you know? Maybe you can risk a little bit.” Paris, for Darwin, began as a visit, not a life plan. “Basically, I don’t have any plan to go to Paris, it’s just a plan to visit. But I met a guy in Paris,” he explains. He moved in May 2019, just before the pandemic. The timing could hardly have been worse. “I moved to Paris for more opportunities, and then COVID came,” he says. “I sacrificed myself, I have a good life in Taiwan, and then I have my own salon, and then it happened.” Yet the city eventually worked its way into his heart. He rents a chair in a coworking salon in central Paris, works with “all nations, French, Lebanese, Latinos, Latinas, Filipino, Japanese, Korean,” and has come to relish the feeling of returning. “Maybe you just hate Paris, or you just love Paris,” he reflects. “The thing is, I love Paris. When I go on vacations, and then when I go back to Paris to go home, it’s like I’m having another vacation.” Reading the Person, Not Just the Face When someone sits in Darwin’s chair, he does not begin with bleach or a blow‑dryer. He begins with conversation. “Before I’m going to start, I’m always talking to the clients and then checking and observing their personality,” he explains. He looks at their face “to know my canvas,” but insists that “about 80%” of the work is guided by who they are rather than their features alone. He pays attention to the small dissonances: the client who wants a glamorous, high‑maintenance look but moves with a shy, practical energy; the woman whose Instagram inspiration does not match her actual life in Paris. “Sometimes you look so glam and chic and then how you move, it’s not the same as the makeup,” he notes. In those moments, his task is to find a style that supports the person rather than the trend. Asked if he ever feels he is editing someone’s life story rather than just their appearance, he answers without hesitation. “I think I’m highlighting the happiest moments of their life, especially for wedding,” he says. “And then erasing the past of their lives and bad things that happened in their lives.” In his hands, hair becomes a kind of text: some parts emphasized, some softened, but the story is still theirs. Two Beauty Worlds in One Chair Darwin’s sense of what suits someone has been shaped by living inside two different beauty cultures. In the Philippines, he saw how straight, rebonded hair and Western‑leaning looks became shorthand for attractiveness. “If you have a rebond hair and straight hair, you’re feeling beautiful,” he says. “That’s why everyone in Philippines, they have straight hair.” Clients bring him pictures of blond hair and balayage they see on Western women, and he understands why. Paris has shown him another aesthetic rhythm. “They just do the ponytail and bun hair without anything,” he says. “It’s just messy, and then they’re still beautiful.” “Here they love volume,” he continues. “They don’t just stay with the thing that is trending right now, if they know they’re beautiful from what they’re doing.” Holding these two worlds together gives him a particular authority when younger Filipinas ask for advice. Many are “so absorbed in trying to look Westernized,” chasing procedures and products that promise to remake them. He suggests another route. “Always be different,” he says. “Don’t go with the same people, what they’re doing, always be different, as long as you feel beautiful, you’re okay.” He talks about trends like weight‑loss injections—“everyone go there”—and offers an alternative that values agency over fashion. “If you’re hesitating to get this one, so don’t get this,” he says. “If you know in yourself that you want to go to the gym, and you can do it normally and naturally, do it.” Then, with the tenderness of an older sibling, he adds: “Baby girl, always be different, in a good way, okay? It’s not always that everyone there is in a good path or the right path.” In a way, this too is harana—an intimate message offered openly, trusting that someone will hear themselves in it. How Transforming Others Transforms Him Over the years, Darwin’s work has taken him far from the small pageants of his early days. In Paris he serves as hair and makeup artist for a video and photography agency, working on commercials for brands that appear on YouTube and other platforms. During fashion week, he joins his boss backstage for runways at major houses, styling models whose images travel much further than the salon ever could. Privately, he maintains a roster of clients that ranges from discreet Parisian businesswomen to Filipino celebrities who pass through Paris during fashion week. These experiences have reshaped his understanding of himself. “Doing hair and makeup has changed my personality,” he reflects. The work has brought him into rooms he once never imagined entering. “Before, I thought it’s the end of the line of my career, you know? Like, I think I’m just, it’s just here,” he admits. “Now, if the president wants me to do the hair and makeup, I am not going to be intimidated anymore.” On a day‑to‑day level, what he values most is the creative trust some clients offer. “It gives me happiness because they are letting me do my things, you know, like, no limitation,” he says. “They give me the freedom of doing my own art. It’s not like a daily routine, like autopilot things. It’s organic. What hair do you want? Surprise me.” Representation, AI, and the Refusal to Panic For Darwin, representation in beauty begins with how he sees the person in front of him before any product is applied. “Makeup is just secondary, it’s just a cover,” he insists. “It boosts your confidence. But I can say, before you’re going to sit in my chair, I can tell you that you’re already beautiful, and you’re already confident.” He knows how much social media and global trends can distort self‑image. “You are just having some influence from social media, that you want to be someone like this or someone like this,” he says. His role is to counter that gently: “For me, you are already beautiful. We are just going to touch it up, we are just going to make it flawless.” When asked about advances in technology, culture, identity politics, and AI, he remains calm. “I believe there is no advanced technology or any advanced AI that can change talent and skills of a person,” he says. “There is AI right now. But there’s a makeup artist. If AI works, why do they need us?” Screens can make things look “beautifully in the screen, but not in person,” he points out. Virtual faces cannot replace the physical reality of hair, skin, and human presence. “There’s no such things as that,” he concludes; “there is still always like that” human formula and touch. In a world where even serenades can be auto‑tuned and streamed, he trusts that there will always be room for live voices and real hands. Beauty as Harana When Darwin is asked to imagine his work as a serenade—serenada, harana—he does not start with theory; he answers with a line that sounds like both a lyric and a life philosophy: “You are beautiful no matter what they say.” He admits it is something he has long told himself. “Because I only tell that to myself,” he says. “You’re always beautiful, no matter what they say, no matter what they do.” The classic Filipino harana envisioned a young man standing outside, risking ridicule to declare his devotion to a woman at her window. Darwin’s harana is different. It happens in a Paris salon, between a stylist and a client, often in a mix of French, English, and Filipino. The love he offers is not romantic but restorative: a way of returning people to themselves after years of comparison and doubt. At thirty‑three, he does not narrate a sudden personal metamorphosis. “Right now, I’m already transformed,” he says with a modest shrug. “Maybe I just want to make it better and better and better.” His dreams are precise and grounded: to keep supporting his parents now that his sister has “already graduated” and is working; to give them small joys, like the Mother’s Day trip he recently paid for; to one day bring them from Palawan to Paris, even if only “for a month.” Until then, his harana continues in the everyday rhythm of the salon. He sweeps the same floor, rents the same station, and welcomes a multicultural mix of clients—French, Asian, and many others—into his chair. Each appointment is a small act of trust: someone sits down, hands him their image, and lets him rewrite a few lines. The guitar of the old harana has become scissors and color; the window is now a mirror; the night sky has been replaced by the glow of Paris light. But the essence is the same. With every careful suggestion, every refusal to erase someone’s origins for the sake of a trend, every gentle “Baby girl, always be different,” Darwin Sanchez Masbang keeps singing a Filipino love song in the heart of France—a harana of beauty that crosses borders and quietly insists: you are already beautiful, and you deserve to be seen on your own terms. 1/0 Images Provided by Darwin Masbang Previous Next

Featured Artists Leslie de Chavez Philippines DISCOVER Yessiow DISCOVER Crystal Worl DISCOVER Jooirang DISCOVER

Independent Works Nihil By: Paolo Coumans Read More The Noguchi Museum By: Julia Sy Read More A Fuller Spectrum of the Complexity of Filipino Culture and Identity By: Pamela A. Coumans Read More Growing Roots in the Air By: Renee Valerie Fajardo Read More

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Fluid Gold Journal is an online journal publication, featuring dynamic substance and engaging lives from Filipinos and Asian communities across the globe. Update in progress...we will be back soon

Featured Creatives Ron Yuan A Life Like a Serenade: Ron Yuan and the Integrity of Transformation Read More Victor Yadne The Song of the Tundra: The Living Art of Victor Yadne Read More Hautahi Kingi Kin to the River: The Life and Work of Hautahi Kingi Read More Jeong-hyeon From Dojang to Runway: A Korean Designer Turning Sweat Into Couture Read More Darwin Masbang “Always Be Different”: Darwin Sanchez Masbang’s Harana of Beauty Between Pampanga and Paris Read More

Fluid Gold Journal digital publication editor explains the origin and intentions of the journal. DIASPORIC LUMINOSITY Welcome to Fluid Gold Journal, a vibrant and forward-thinking digital publication dedicated to celebrating the rich cultural heritage, shared histories, and contemporary stories of Asian communities worldwide. Our mission is to inspire connection, creativity, and understanding across all cultures by exploring meaningful narratives and perspectives. We extend our gratitude to Mr. Taipan Lucero for anchoring the essence of Fluid Gold Journal through his Baybayin-inspired logo, in which he incorporated Baybayin calligraphy, reflecting his expertise as a calligrapher. THE EDITOR'S STORY Fluid Gold Journal was born from a passion for uncovering the profound connections that link Asian communities across centuries and geographies. While we celebrate the shared histories that unite us, we also aim to recognize the complexities and diversity of Asian cultures, showcasing both their similarities and differences. By doing so, we strive to create a platform that honors individuality, resists the homogenization of experiences, and avoids fostering stereotypes. Through this lens, the journal celebrates the evolving stories that define the Asian experience while fostering deeper appreciation and understanding. MODEL ONE Before the modern era, Asia thrived as a vibrant tapestry of interconnected cultures, with trade, art, and knowledge flowing seamlessly across its vast expanse—from the steppes of Central Asia to the shores of the Pacific, the mountains of the Himalayas to the islands of the Indian Ocean. These exchanges fostered a dynamic blend of ideas, traditions, and practices that shaped a collective legacy of creativity and resilience. Fluid Gold Journal celebrates this diversity by recognizing and honoring the unique contributions from every corner of the continent, emphasizing the interconnectedness and individuality of each culture. MODEL TWO Imagine a family gathering where generations come together to share stories, laughter, and meals. In this space, the wisdom of elders mingles with the vibrant ideas of younger members, and tales of daily life intertwine with cherished cultural traditions passed down over time. These moments capture the universal importance of family as the heart of storytelling, preserving and celebrating both individual and collective heritage. Through Fluid Gold Journal, we invite readers to explore and appreciate the cultural threads that weave through time and across regions, fostering a deeper understanding of the connections that unite us all. Fluid Gold Journal warmly welcomes contributions from writers, artists, poets, historians, and travelers of all backgrounds. Your unique perspectives and creative expressions are essential in celebrating our shared cultural legacies. Fluid Gold Journal is a publication of Mula Project which is fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). Pamela A. Coumans Editor | Fluid Gold Journal SUPPORT FLUID GOLD JOURNAL DONATE To request for your work to be published, please contact us at info@fluidgoldjournal.com Subscribe now and join the circle! Join Our Mailing List Thanks for subscribing!

< Back Hautahi Kingi Kin to the River: The Life and Work of Hautahi Kingi Images Provided by Hautahi Kingi To the Whanganui people of Aotearoa New Zealand, the river is a living elder — older than any written account, and inseparable from who they are, with the quiet certainty of something that has never needed explaining. E rere kau mai te awa nui nei Mai i te kāhui maunga ki Tangaroa Ko au te awa Ko te awa ko au “Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au – I am the river, and the river is me.” In one well‑known story, Taranaki Maunga, the ancestral mountain for iwi including Ngā Rauru, once stood among the central peaks; when he fled west in grief he gouged a deep valley through the land, and the waters that filled that scar became the Whanganui River, so mountain and river are remembered as kin rather than separate things. For Hautahi Kingi (Ngā Rauru, Te Āti Haunui‑a‑Pāpārangi), this Whanganui proverb names a world in which people and place are bound like kin, the river not a view or a resource but another way of saying “we.” From his childhood near the banks of the Whanganui River and the foothills of Mount Taranaki, to his work as an economist and senior data scientist at Google, Kingi’s life traces a line between ancestral stories and contemporary tools, a line he makes visible in writing such as his long essay “The Past Matters: Reflections on Tangata Whenua.” Across policy rooms, classrooms, and the page, he carries a way of thinking in which whenua — land — is origin, memory, and responsibility rather than property. To harm the river, in this worldview, is to harm the people themselves — a conviction the wider world finally honored in 2017, when New Zealand granted the Whanganui River full legal personhood, the first river anywhere to be recognized as a living whole with rights of its own Born in Auckland, New Zealand, to his Māori father and Pākehā mother — Pākehā being a term for a non-Māori New Zealander of European descent — Kingi began living in his father’s homeland of Pākaraka when he was two years old. Pākaraka is a small rural settlement near Whanganui, in the shadows of Mount Taranaki on the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. As Kingi described his father’s childhood there, “Pākaraka was an unmodern world where horses were commonly used for transportation and work. Many houses during his father’s youth did not have electricity or running water. It was also a place where traditional Māori beliefs were still deeply held.” The Old Ways of Keeping For instance, his father is a whāngai child — raised according to the Māori customary practice of whāngai, in which a child is brought up by someone other than their birth parents, usually within the wider whānau, in an open, kin-based arrangement that maintains the child’s connections to both sets of parents. After his older brother died at a young age, Kingi’s father was adopted into another branch of the whānau as a whāngai as a means of spiritual protection. Two Ways of Bidding Farewell In Aotearoa New Zealand, a marae is a community meeting place made up of a ceremonial courtyard and buildings such as the meeting house and dining hall, where Māori families and tribes gather for welcomes, funerals, celebrations, and important discussions, and where language, customs, and ancestral connections are actively lived and maintained. When asked about a specific memory he has about his marae, Kingi talked about the customs around a funeral which they call tangihanga. A traditional funeral takes place in one of the buildings in the marae. “It is an open casket funeral where the family spends the night and brings their food. Over the process of three days, visitors come in and out. There is acceptance and sharing of grief that is quite profound. ” Each night, people share their whaikōrero, or formal farewell speeches followed by a song. The tangihanga, or tangi, concludes with a communal feast called the hākari following the burial. This meal serves as a gesture of thanksgiving and signals the lifting of death-related tapu (restrictions), with mourners often contributing koha (monetary gifts) to support it. While singing plays a role throughout the broader ceremony — particularly during the Poroporoaki, the farewell gathering held the night before burial — it is not a defining element of the feast itself. The evening after the burial is known as the pō whakangahau, a time set aside for rest and light entertainment. In contrast to a Western funeral where Kingi explains, “the process of grieving tends to be more private and the funeral is over within an hour or so.” Western funerals prioritize individual grief and structured ceremony, reflecting a culture that values privacy, efficiency, and closure — death is mourned, marked, and then life resumes. The Māori approach, by contrast, treats death as a communal event that belongs to everyone, where time slows down, obligations to the deceased and their family are fulfilled collectively, and the transition out of life is honored with the same weight as any major life event. One tradition asks mourners to attend; the other asks them to show up entirely. Success and the Profound Meaning of Contribution As a well‑accomplished individual living in the Western world, Kingi was asked to define what success means to him in relation to his Māori tradition. “Career, business, or financial success weren’t discussed or considered, at least from my perspective growing up.” What mattered more was not a person’s title but their contributions: it could be “the person who ran the kitchen, an elder who delivered a speech, or the person who created carvings or songs,” all of whom helped sustain the community. In that world, family events such as welcoming a new baby are deeply acknowledged and celebrated as markers of a life well lived. As Kingi moved deeper into Western institutions, his understanding of achievement underwent a quiet but significant reorientation. “Success and failure is a relative concept,” he reflected. “I knew that doing well or not doing well in an exam, in one part of my life, was valued and is an important thing, but meant little in a different part of my life. I knew that I just needed to work hard towards whatever I personally valued because that was the only way to gain satisfaction — and that, really, is what success means.” For Kingi, success was never about external validation — it was about living in alignment with his own values and responsibilities. Everyone has a Hidden Talent Flowing from this broader view of success, Kingi also emphasised the importance of recognising the diversity of talents and skill sets. “Someone may not be an eloquent speaker so they will not contribute that way, but they may be good with their hands so they will contribute that way. You cannot really judge anyone by what you see up front because they all have talents that are untold.” Even in the high‑pressure environment of Google, he notes, “people are built in to be smart. When I have a problem, there is always someone smarter than me that I can turn to.” Together, these reflections sketch a vision of success grounded in contribution, humility, and the quiet strengths that often go unseen. Between Struggles and Negotiations “Ka whawhai tonu mātou, ake! ake! ake!” — “We will continue to fight, forever and ever and ever” — captures exactly what Kingi argues in his 2015 essay “The Past Matters”: that the struggles of the nineteenth century are not over, but live on in the present through land loss, data practices, and ongoing claims to Māori sovereignty. The phrase arose from the New Zealand Wars of the 1860s, when Māori forces faced British troops in brutal campaigns across Taranaki and Waikato and still refused to surrender at places like Ōrākau, turning those battlefields into symbols of an unbroken resolve to resist. In Kingi’s work, that history flows forward into the present — and his own life is part of that current. As a child of that legacy, he was only nine years old when he became one of the first Māori students to enter an elite private school on scholarship, moving not outside but through a system that might easily have tried to absorb him. That same negotiation followed him into his professional life. Kingi himself put it this way: “There are some interesting conflicts that arise in my work between core tenets of my profession and concepts that are valued in the Maori world. For example, the tech world’s preference for anonymous, depersonalized information brushes up against the importance placed by Maori on the importance of identity, and knowing who a datapoint represents before analyzing or making judgements.” In that sense, Māori were never truly overcome — military defeat did not erase their language, identity, or tino rangatiratanga, but pushed the struggle into new arenas where memory, presence, and relational accountability become forms of resistance. It is no coincidence that Kingi was born in 1987, the same year te reo Māori was made an official language of Aotearoa New Zealand, tying his life and work to a wider resurgence that proves the old promise “we will continue to fight” still beats inside contemporary stories, classrooms, code, and conversations. A Song Across Time In Māori culture, the karanga is much more than a formal greeting; it is a kind of ancestral serenade, an exchange of calls that draws people, place, and memory into the same breath. As the first woman rises to call, her voice doesn’t just reach the visitors—it reaches backwards, too, acknowledging those who have gathered on that ground before and the ancestors who still linger there, listening. Each karanga unfolds like a song across time: it names the living who approach, yet it also recognises that the marae is never occupied by the present alone. As Kingi explains, “it is seen as strengthening of the relationship between the physical and spiritual realm,” a reminder that any meeting is also a reunion with those who came before, and with the stories they left behind. The answering call from the visitors completes that serenade, not by erasing distance but by honouring it—two sides calling to each other across land, time, and genealogy until, step by step, they draw close enough to stand together. Quiet Assumptions, Loud Consequences Kingi’s perspective in the short report he co‑authored in 2016, Unconscious Bias and Education: A Comparative Study of Māori and African American Students, published under the auspices of Oranui, is that the most dangerous racism in schools is often the kind that doesn’t feel like racism at all—quiet, automatic assumptions that lower expectations for certain students while claiming to treat everyone the same. In that work, produced from his base at Cornell University, he treats unconscious bias as a “natural” human tendency shaped by history and culture, but insists that educators have a responsibility to notice how it lands on Māori and African American children in particular. For a young Māori reader, his advice is both practical and subversive: teachers are an important source of knowledge, but they are only one source of knowledge and opinion; if you are interested in something, you should seek out other people who have insight in that same area instead of letting a single classroom define what you are capable of. Speaking directly to young people who find themselves isolated in elite spaces, he tells them that if they feel like they are on their own, that is usually not true, that they got there somehow, and that they can take it as an opportunity to be unique and to forge a new path for the next ninety people who will arrive after them. When Kingi was growing up, there were no visible Māori mathematicians or economists around him, but that absence did not mean his people lacked the ability—it simply meant the system did not yet expect them there. By becoming a Māori economist himself and co‑authoring a 2016 study on unconscious bias through Oranui and Cornell, he has quietly used his own path through elite education into an argument that bias can be unlearned and futures rewritten. The Conflict between Norms and Progress Kingi’s reflections offer a nuanced, insider critique of how certain Māori cultural norms intersect with younger generations’ ideas of progress. In his words, “there is definitely a conflict between ways of working, so that anonymity versus focal point thing I talked about earlier,” capturing the tension between traditional expectations of humility and collective orientation, and contemporary pressures to be visible and individually prominent. He also notes that “there are conflicts in terms of what is valued, so that career success versus family success, for example,” highlighting the way professional ambition can feel at odds with obligations to whānau and community. Kingi then moves into more contentious territory, suggesting that “there are some Māori traditions that maybe ought to be questioned, in that they are against what we might call cultural or moral progress in some ways.” He acknowledges the social cost of raising these concerns: “I’ve written just a little bit about this and received some pushback,” yet maintains that “maybe that is a conversation worth having, and that conflict needs to happen.” His central example concerns the gendered allocation of roles on the marae. He observes that “for example, there are roles on the marae that are very segregated in a way that I think is a shame.” Specifically, “the people who do the karanga are women,” while “the people who do the whaikōrero—which is the centrepiece, the high‑status performance on the marae—are men,” and “when seated on the marae, the men sit in front of the women.” For Kingi, “gender matters a lot in the allocation of roles on the marae, and I think that is not necessarily a good thing.” On this basis, he concludes, “I think it is worth questioning those things, because arguably they do stand in the way of a certain type of progress.” Viewed through the lens of Chesterton’s fence—the idea that we should understand why a tradition or institution exists before altering or discarding it—Kingi’s stance is broadly positive and constructive. He does not dismiss Māori practices as arbitrary; instead, he speaks as someone who recognizes their depth and significance, even as he insists that “maybe that is a conversation worth having, and that conflict needs to happen.” In effect, he treats these customs as meaningful structures that first demand understanding and respect, but then invites a critical question: if certain arrangements, such as rigidly gendered roles on the marae, “do stand in the way of a certain type of progress,” is it time to reconsider how the “fence” is built, so that it continues to protect cultural identity without unduly limiting the aspirations and equality of younger Māori, especially women? Who Owes What to Whom Drawing on his academic work on “The Dynamic Effects of Immigration” and his chapter “International Migration: The Great Trade-Off” in Fair Borders?, where he traces how migration shifts welfare between wealthy households and workers over time, Kingi is asked what a fair “intergenerational contract” on immigration might look like—one that balances the interests of today’s rich and poor with those of tomorrow’s migrants. He almost recoils at the scale of the question, admitting, “this is a huge societal question… I don’t even know how to express it,” a striking hesitation from someone who has spent years quantifying those very trade-offs. In the interview he returns to the same terrain that animates his writing, describing immigration as sitting at the junction of “ethics… the philosophy of morality… and economics,” where choices about who can move, and on what terms, become choices about what current citizens owe to future newcomers. Framing policy as an “intergenerational contract” simply makes explicit what his research already implies: that border decisions today quietly lock in the life chances of people who have not yet arrived, often shifting returns “in favour of wealthy households at the expense of workers” during long transition periods. No Miracle Jumps In reflecting on career advice for young people, Kingi pushes back against the allure of prestige and social media narratives, grounding his perspective in steady effort and genuine interest. He cautions against fixating on specific companies, noting, “You need to make sure you’re doing it not for whatever company you want to end up in, because that company might not exist,” adding that even Google “wasn’t something you could have planned for” years ago. Instead, he frames success as a chain of logical steps rather than a dramatic leap: “At no point… was there some kind of miracle jump,” he explains, describing how his path grew from simply enjoying math, working hard, and progressing through opportunities. Kingi is particularly critical of how online content distorts expectations, warning that “taking content that’s online as an accurate representation” of careers is misleading, as viral glimpses of “Google parties” or perks represent “like 1% of the job.” The reality, he says, is far less glamorous—“hours at a desk… working endlessly, struggling to understand things”—but ultimately more meaningful for those willing to commit to the process. The River Was Always Him From childhood, the Whanganui serenaded Hautahi Kingi — not as scenery, but as a lifeline, the same current that had carried his people through generations of survival and loss. He has built econometric models at the frontier of labour research, produced work that shapes how nations understand their own people, and written essays that reach back centuries to make sense of the present — but the Whanganui still runs through the thinking, the way blood runs through kin. The proverb his people have lived by — Ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au — is not a sentiment he recites; it is the declaration of a man who understands the river not as landscape but as family, as self, as the oldest relative he has. He came of age as the river was finding its own recognition in the eyes of the law — and like the Whanganui, he too has had to make himself legible to a world not built around Māori ways of knowing, without ever surrendering what those ways protect. The river was given legal personhood in 2017, but the Whanganui people never needed the law to tell them what they already knew: that to be of this place is to be of this river, bound to it the way kin are bound — not by choice, but by blood. He is, as the proverb has always insisted, the river — and the river is him. 1/0 Images Provided by Hautahi Kingi Previous Next

Fluid Gold Journal will have a library of past articles and essays in order for our collaborators and readers to have access to “read only” materials in the future. ARTICLES | Inaugural Issue | June 2024 ERICA PAREDES MARIA RIVERA VEEJAY FLORESCA JEREMY HU TAIPAN LUCERO DAYAT SUTISNO JOSHUA PALISOC RAYNARD BORILLO ARTICLES | Second Edition | September 2024 JAY-R GAMBOA FLORES NGUYEN TIEN TRUYEN KERMIT TESORO MICHEL AMAZONKA LE NGOC LAM MINAE LEE ANNI LIU BRIAN HOANG PING HATTA ARTICLES | Third Edition | January 2025 NGUYEN MANH LAN SHAIRA VENTURA JAMES RAMSEY MIRJAN HIPOLITO ARMAN NUMUKHANBETOV CHARLIE LE GRICE KATRINA PALLON MEGAN MAEGZTER MARIO MERCADO ARTICLES | Fourth Edition | July 2025 ROMAN ZARAGOZA SYBIL WA MICHAEL CHO ELIZABETH CLENCI TAYLOR YASUI BILIGT ENKHTAIVAN NANCY QIN HERMINIO TAN NIYAMAT MEHTA