Cover Gold House is forging bonds in the AAPI community from east to west (Photo: Gold House)
Gold House is forging bonds in the AAPI community from east to west (Photo: Gold House)
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Gold House’s CEO Bing Chen and head of platform Oscar Wong share the organisation’s mission to expand in Asia, starting with Singapore
Mickey Mouse has long been an enduring Disney character beloved around the world. With his signature yellow boots and bright red pants, the cartoon character is unmistakable. Sporting dark “hair” and light complexion, a young Bing Chen was led to believe that both the character and its creator were Asian.
This impressionable young boy would grow up to become the chief executive of Gold House, a platform to showcase various talents and stories of Asian Pacific Islanders (API) across various industries. He eventually realised his misinterpretation of Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney of course, but growing up believing that his role model Disney was of Asian descent like him, was the encouragement that led him to perceive his racial identity as a strength rather than a weakness.
Moving between Shanghai and Tennessee during his childhood, Chen quickly learned that all of humanity shared common traits. “We just may talk about or manifest those priorities differently. Every human being, no matter where you are, cares about three things: physical longevity, strong familial relationships and impact,” he tells Tatler Singapore in an interview.
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Over the years, he’s come to realise the issue of inequity present worldwide—particularly in the Asian population. “For instance, what has happened to Islam worldwide is highly problematic. There’s a lot of ostracisation, nodes and wars against the community,” he shares, adding that we all have a responsibility to help balance these inequities.
With the hope of helping to build up and support the API community, Chen started Gold House in 2018. Over the years, Gold House has celebrated and empowered the API community. Through multiple initiatives, the organisation provides a platform to showcase various talents and stories of API individuals across various industries. One of its biggest achievements is #GoldOpen, a groundbreaking movement that rallied communities to support API-led films including Crazy Rich Asians and Parasite, creating impressions of the API community in Hollywood and beyond.
“With Asia, Asians are actually the biggest population in the world. But, you often don’t see or think that when you look at TV screens…We’re most excited not just to unify different continents but unify people to help build a better tomorrow and more inclusive, thoughtful and successful world,” Chen explains.
Through Gold House, Chen hopes to empower everyone with a fair shot at realising their ambitions and dreams.
In 2022, Chen brought in Oscar Wong as head of platform, recognising his passion for wanting to enact change in the API community.
Wong grew up in Monterey Park, California, a city where 65 per cent of its population is of Asian descent, according to the United States Census Bureau. His childhood was surrounded by people who “looked like me”. Like Chen, Wong didn’t see his racial identity as a weakness. He adds: “For the longest time, I didn’t really raise my own American Pacific Identity.” It was only after returning to the US from working in Hong Kong that he realised that he didn’t really “fit in” in both worlds. He continues: “in one world I’m viewed as too white and in the other world I’m viewed as too Asian.”
Through Gold House, he also hopes to create a world where “my children can be seen as equals without fear”.
It’s no doubt that Gold House has played a major role in fostering unity for communities that have historically been underrepresented. But it’s influence doesn’t stop there. Now that Gold House has built the largest Asian Leadership Network in America, Chen feels ready to expand to Asia, beginning with Singapore.
“Singapore is an emerging entrepreneurial hub for founders and companies to expand their business operations [and so] we’re really excited for Singapore [to be our] gateway to the rest of Asia,” Wong says. With an “emerging hotbed of entrepreneurial talent in Singapore itself”, Wong can see the island becoming a breeding ground for talent and the “next Silicon Valley of Asia”.
Excited about the company’s foray into Asia, Chen shares that they are excited to put the spotlight on the “gifts that our diaspora has”. He explains how a third of YouTube’s top categories were led by Asians in 2010—beauty was led by Michelle Phan, comedy was led by Ryan Higa, and filmmaking was led by Wong Fu Productions. He adds that even in traditional media today, the most awarded film of all time is Everything Everywhere All At Once, while one of the biggest media franchises in the world is Pokemon.
On top of encouraging future generations and communities in Asia to be proud of their identity, Chen hopes that Gold House will highlight the “ingenuity that has always existed in our community” while promoting opportunities for the community in both North America and Asia.
With Gold House already making waves in the API community in the United States, there is no doubt that it will do so in Asia too.
Amanda Goh was the former senior writer for Tatler Singapore.
