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 is an artist. Sometimes we did only two or three shots a day because we were waiting for the sun.

I didn't go to normal children school. I went to sports school when I was 8. So I studied martial arts.

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

I study more of truth and enlightening. I had to go the next level to talk about life.

I remember when I was 11, I did some Kung-fu demonstrations in Hong Kong in 1974.

But recently I've, the past few years, I'm more focused on meditation. It's not a physical part. It's more mental part, to understand life.