A young Chinese digital content creation company is revolutionizing how people, and particularly youth, experience culture. FunionLabs provides immersive, online, and offline content solutions for cities, companies, and strong support for the youth culture. The company also relies on a strong intellectual property protection policy and educates its customers about the importance of IP.
Xia Yang is the founder of FunionLabs and its Chief Content Officer. As a student, she majored in construction, but after graduating, her interest led her into media and broadcasting, where she built a successful career, including 10 years at a provincial-level TV station focused on cultural management and digital media.
A buoyant content creator, Xia started in traditional content but found her true calling in the innovative exploration of integrating culture and technology, which gave her a glimpse of a world of new possibilities. She also realized that there is, as she calls it, a “translation gap” between Chinese cultural heritage and youth.
In January 2019, she decided to express her creativity freely and founded FunionLabs in Changsha’s Malashan Video Cultural and Creative Park, joined by two partners, Ying Liu, and Tiger Pan. The Malashan Video Cultural and Creative Park is a hub for cultural and creative companies, fostering collaboration to explore the integration of culture and technology, she explained. “F” stands for “fun,” “union” represents the connection between youth and society, and “labs” conveys the creativity and curiosity of the company.
FunionLabs creates digital content for three main targets: cities, local culture, and youth. The company provides an overall content solution that combines cultural depth and digital technology to shape a unique brand image.
Bridging Chinese Culture and Trends with Immersive Technology
Xia realized that there was a gap between cultural traditions and trends, and that very few professionals could translate the cultural core into high-quality language. “I founded FunionLabs in the hope of building a bridge to make culture alive in the present rather than being displayed in a museum.”
Chinese culture is the company’s “creative mother tongue and spiritual source code,” she said. “It provides us with an inexhaustible treasure trove of inspiration from philosophical thoughts, aesthetic styles, to stories and legends. FusionLabs extracts its spiritual message, such as landscape philosophy, and recreates it using a global digital language.
FunionLabs sees itself as a digital translator, transforming traditional cultural intellectual property into immersive experiences and visual creations that appeal to young people through cutting-edge technology. Virtual reality/augmented reality, naked-eye 3D, which allows the illusion of depth without 3D glasses, and AI-generated content are used by FunionLabs designers and engineers to best fit the cultural stories they want to tell and the emotional experiences they want to create.
The greatest value of AI, Xia said, “is to liberate our creativity, enabling us to get rid of repetitive labor and focus more on the most core narrative concept and emotional connection.”
Youth Culture to Promote Youth Creativity
One of FunionLabs’ specificities is its youth culture. Xia describes it as “self-expression, community belonging, and an optimistic exploration of the future.” “We don’t define youth,” she said, “but co-create with them, providing them with tools and platforms for expression, so that they can become participants in cultural creation rather than just consumers.”
FunionLabs organizes campaigns, shows, art festivals, and digital videos and content to express the youth culture.
Fun Market is one of FunionLabs’ offline products, which the company defines as a “youth gravitational field.” Buying products is no longer the core demand of the market, but “an emerging field driven by interests, identity, and experiences.” Fun Market events take place in shopping malls, cultural centers, or outdoor parks.
The company organized the "Unlimited Encore" event on 1 October 2025, a creative, offline youth culture event that integrated the "Fun Market," a "Youth Conference Forum," and a "Self-Tour LIVE" concert, attracting some 140,000 people. The company plans to make it an annual event.
Virtual Exhibitions for Immersive Art Experience
of the Dragon Spring Festival-themed
visual identity, designed by Yang Xia's
team --- designer Pan Hu
FunionLabs, now staffed by 40 people—mainly designers and technical engineers—has seven products on the market, both online and offline. One of them is the “Myriad Views of Xiaoxiang: The Digital Millennium ” series. The product, which uses data visualization, real-time rendering, and interactive design, was featured as “the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang Digital Millennium" at the China Pavilion of the Osaka World Expo in August. “Viewers can walk into the painting and interact with the scenery.” “This has completely changed the way people appreciate and understand classical art, from static viewing to immersive experience,” she explained, adding that the project is “the ultimate embodiment of our concept of digital translation.”
FunionLabs’ customers are diverse. The company collaborates with local urban culture, tourism projects, national and international cities, commercial brands, and sometimes non-governmental organizations.
Currently, the company primarily works with Chinese organizations and customers, but its digital artworks are now being exhibited at international digital art festivals.
Intellectual Property, a Lifeline for FunionLabs
Intellectual Property is taken very seriously by FunionLabs. Xia considers it the company's “lifeline.” The company’s strategy includes core IP for the “FunionLabs” and “Myriad Views of Xiaoxiang: The Digital Millennium” brands, with both trademarks and copyrights registered. For the digital content, original technical solutions generated for each project, FunionLabs uses copyright protection. The company also uses strong contract terms that define each party's ownership rights, scope of use, and subsequent development rights when it enters into a collaboration with a third party.
Intellectual Property and Brand Education
For FunionLabs’ clients, collaborating with a company that values IP means they do not have to worry about potential copyright disputes and can use the content provided by FunionLabs for promotion on their global markets, according to Xia. She noted that although IP awareness among her clients is rising, “there is still a long way to go.” However, many clients, particularly international clients, actively inquire about the ownership and usage terms of IP. “We regard intellectual property education as part of our services and actively communicate with clients to help them understand that protecting IP well is to protect their future business potential.”
Trailblazing Virtual Reality for Cultural Heritage Preservation
In the next five years, Xia described a future in which FunionLabs becomes a benchmark enterprise in cultural and technological integration in China and Asia. She also envisions the company becoming a well-known brand in the global digital art and cultural and creative fields, with its works exhibited at top venues in New York, Paris, and Tokyo.
FunionLabs participated in a WIPO SME strengthening project for selected SMEs and startups in the digital entertainment industry by enhancing their understanding of copyright protection, IP management, and commercialization strategies. The project promoted the strategic use of AI and emerging technologies in content creation. FunionLabs will be invited to customized mentoring sessions.
