I always think it's really hard if you are Asian or Chinese to be really in Hollywood. There are not so many really great characters for you.

Zhang Yimou is always going to need young, pretty girls for his films. But I don't really concern myself with what Zhang Yimou's next starlet looks like.

My parents sent me to a dance class, so it was a road chosen by them, not me. But I enjoyed it so much I knew I would become a performer.

I was really interested in geishas' work, and wanted to meet real geishas.

Actually I ran away from school when I was 13. No one could find me, and the police were called. I was just hiding in a little thicket of grass at my school, and went to sleep.

Chinese women are much more modest than American women when it comes to clothes. We tend to show less flesh.

There was one very special scene at the end of the film. My character, Zhao Di, has been sick. She wakes up and her mother tells her that the man she loves has come back from the city and had spent the day by her bedside.