Failure is a fuel for excuses.

Usually action films have a formula: good guy gets in trouble, his wife dies, friends have problems, so he goes to the mountain, learns martial arts, comes back, and kills the bad guy.

Zhang Yimou tried to use martial arts to talk about Chinese culture, Chinese people. What do they think, what do they want and what do they hope.

I stepped into the martial arts movie market when I was only 16.

Zhang is a friend of mine: he said forget about acting and just do normal things in the movie.

I want to thank my mum, my daddy, my coach, my teacher, everybody in my life.

I think all actors want to change. When you do something many times, over and over, you want to do something fresh. But movie is still my business. A lot of action actors want change, but no studio wants to spend money on something that is not guaranteed; not proven. I think it is very difficult. It is hard to change.