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.

China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In China, I am constantly under surveillance. Even my slightest, most innocuous move can - and often is - censored by Chinese authorities.

If there is no freedom of expression, then the beauty of life is lost. Participation in a society is not an artistic choice, it’s a human need.

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.

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.

I don't think it's worth discussing new directions in the context of Chinese art - there were no old directions, either. Chinese art has never had any clear orientation.

I don't personally feel any association with a kind of culture related to state, or culture related to power, which I think is always disgusting.