We did not come here to beg.
Everything we create — words, images, sounds, ideas — has been paid for with our lives.
I waited six years in the forest, facing wild animals, with my life hanging by a thread. A landslide fell from above; I stayed. A flood rushed beneath my feet; I stayed.
I gave ten years to one project, without wages or funding, sustained by stubborn courage. I walked the dirt roads of Pingyao. Nobody paid me a penny. I came anyway.
At three in the morning, alone at an editing desk, I cut darkness into dawn. In the forest, listening to wild animals howl, I held a machete in both hands.
Nobody saw us. We did not need applause. We asked for one thing: that work be treated as work, and creation as creation.
But what has this world done to creators?
Platforms take half. Settlement takes three months. A magazine uses a project worth tens of thousands, yet only a few thousand reach me. Rules are opaque; algorithms run like dark rivers. I created the value and received the smallest share. The brighter my work, the emptier my hands.
Nearly two centuries ago, Marx described the object produced by labour confronting its maker as something alien. The more you create, the less your creation belongs to you. You stake your life; someone else takes the money.
This is not exchange. It is extraction.
We have had enough.
Together, we will build the Global Creators’ Sanctuary.
Not a shop. Not an agency. A sanctuary. A home for creators.
We enter with what we have made through our lives. Nobody has the right to steal it or take a share that is not theirs. This place exists so that creation belongs to its creator.
Kant described people as ends, not merely means. Yet creators are treated as traffic, material and instruments of profit. Their dignity is divided, traded and counted in someone else's financial report.
Heidegger understood art as truth setting itself into the work. Every work is a moment of light entering the world. An invisible wall keeps that light apart from its maker.
Rousseau wrote of human freedom. Freedom to create, to price your work and to know where your money goes is not a favour. It is yours.
Our predecessors spoke of the great beauty of heaven and Earth, beyond words. That beauty is silent and immense. We must keep both beauty and its makers from being swallowed by extraction.
We place these convictions in every stone of this sanctuary.
Here, the creator's labour belongs entirely to the creator.
The Sanctuary is no middleman. It lets creator and buyer meet. Price, sale, payment and delivery are between the two of them. The platform takes no part.
There was always someone standing between creator and buyer: a gallery, a platform, an agent. Each took a cut. The creator made the work, yet little of its value reached them.
The Sanctuary does not stand there. We simply open the door and let creator and buyer meet.
After that, what you charge, whether you deal, how you pay and how you deliver are entirely between the two of you. We take no part, take no cut, guarantee no transaction and hold no funds.
Because we do not stand in the middle, there is no cut to take. Without that middle link, joining, showing and connecting are free — and can stay free.
Not a little less. The middleman is gone.
A global public-service platform founded by renowned photographer Hou Yimin, maintained at his own expense so creators and buyers have somewhere to meet directly.
The Global Creators’ Sanctuary belongs to no company. It belongs to everyone who has given their life to creation.
Here, you are not merely a user. You belong here. You are not inventory or content to be harvested. You are the reason this place exists.
No advertising. No paid ranking. No selling your data, attention or traffic.
Creators — wherever you are, whatever language you speak, whatever you photograph, write or make — this is your home.
You need not beg for a recommendation or flatter an algorithm. You need not surrender your work to a platform that takes half.
You need only bring your work.
Bring our hearts. Bring our lives. Bring everything we create.
If we can give our lives to creation, what can we not do together?
This sanctuary is ours.
Creators, unite. Reclaim what has been taken. Make what is owed visible. Build our sanctuary.
Take it back, or rebuild from the ashes.
— Global Creators’ Sanctuary · Founded
