The L.A. weather is a lot like Taiwan's, where you don't observe four seasons, so the years can pass and you don't feel a thing.

I think that at heart I am an old-fashioned Chinese, really I am.

When you talk about God, the first thing that comes along is not love, it's fear. You have to fear, and be in awe. You have to be scared. Any religion, it's like first thing.

I wanted to shoot straight, mainstream, somehow off-beat. Not only realistic West, which is quite unfamiliar to the world's population - even to a lot of Americans.

My first instinct was to cast as close to the short story as possible, but then I realized that I needed actors who could go for it and that they had to function well as a couple in a love story.

I look at American movies, the big muscles, and try to apply that to Chinese film-making.

The way I go about a lovemaking scene is that we will talk about it during the rehearsing time.