In 1972, after a stay at the Maharani of Porbandar's residence, T'ang Haywen and his artist friend Andre Dzierzynski settled in a small beachside bungalow in Goa, immersing themselves in the local hippie community in search of a better world. There, T'ang met filmmaker Tom Tam and his girlfriend Martha Sandler, who were concluding a long journey across India. Tom, like T'ang, was born in Fujian but had migrated to the USA with his parents.

Years later, Martha recalled their encounter: "T'ang laid sheets of cardboard on a table, two at a time, and painted as if guided by an automatic process. He worked quickly, completing one piece after another, then paused to enjoy the day — walking on the beach, meeting people, cooking, and eating. He was quiet, smiling, and discreet, while I, a tall American woman, found myself in the company of two Chinese men..."

During their travels, Tom had filmed Martha as the central figure. These images evolved into Furen Boogie (The Lady's Boogie), a psychedelic journey that captures the spirit of the era. The film, punctuated by a staccato of images, reflects an initiatory experience that both attracts and repels. It echoes the 1960s' revolutionary ideas on communication and imagery, emphasizing a new consciousness of the world, life, and human experience — achieved through play, experimentation, and exploration of both external and inner spaces.

Furen Boogie also offers a unique, condensed vision of 1970s India, seen through the lens of a Chinese immigrant shaped by new theories of communication. In 1973, Tom visited T'ang in Paris, where he observed stacks of T'ang's works — piles of left and right sides of diptychs, preserved as they were painted.

In Goa, Tom and T'ang had discussed their creative processes: Tom, as an American filmmaker influenced by Marshall McLuhan's ideas ("The medium is the message"), and T'ang, as a Chinese artist who had broken free from Confucian constraints to become the instrument of his own creations. They explored the interplay between Tom's machine, capable of capturing and sequencing 24 images per second, and T'ang's stacked, visionary works. T'ang proposed to arrange the images sequentially.

The result, T'ang Boogie, may well be the first "film d'artiste" by a modern Chinese painter — a groundbreaking fusion of ink and film that remains strikingly relevant today, perhaps even more so in our contemporary age.