I think by not letting young people be fully informed, how can they have energy and passion and the right picture of the world? I think that's the true crime.

China spends a lot of resources and effort on gaining soft power over culture. The hope is that it can be the last lifeline for the Party's survival. Obviously, the idea will fail.

Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.

I don't believe in a sense of home.

I never felt like a Chinese citizen because I was pushed away at a very young age. My father, a writer, was a national enemy of the Communist Party. He was forbidden to write for 20 years. We literally lived underground. We dug a hole and lived there for years. My father cleaned public toilets, even though he was a highly respected poet. Nationality and borders are barriers to our intelligence, to our imagination and to all kinds of possibilities.

Just look at the statistics: Each university has tens of thousands of applications for students who want to be in art school, but they can only accept a few hundred.

Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years, anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.