I was an illegal alien for many, many years. I couldn't move. If I moved I could not even get a visa back.

The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that's all I know.

Modern Chinese culture is weak and lackluster.

People have a tendency to become elite rather than to care about the general conditions of the society, which makes me sick. It's an unbearable condition.

My understanding of Chinese history is limited. So far, I have only scratched its surface; I wish I could find out more.

Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.

Every day I'm learning something new from the practice. It's very rewarding.