I think by shattering it we can create a new form, a new way to look at what is valuable — how we decide what is valuable.

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.

What counts in the end is what the government does.

It's always nice to share your energy with young people, the people who might not have any skills but are simply willing to be a part of it.

I can still wake up the next day and feel that there's something that needs to be done, which always amuses me.

...photographs are facts, but not necessarily true... The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.

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.