[Cultural department] understand nothing but bureaucratic daily affairs. They don't care about culture.

[Museums] all belongs to the cultural department, which is the biggest cultural department in the world.

When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.

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.

At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.

This so-called fame or being better off doesn't really attract me at all.

I don't like China. Even today, I still feel I have no emotional relations with this place.