I spend a lot of time talking to journalists.
China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.
We should use this public sphere and redefine - beyond China's borders - what a government is allowed to do, where its powers end and where the realm of a citizen's privacy begins.
At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year - 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me. These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.
In China, we don't have any contemporary art museums. Until a few years ago, we didn't even have a gallery.
Civilization has evolved toward more acceptance, understanding and tolerance of global thinking. If we accept differences, our creativity booms. It makes life much more colorful. It also makes humanity much more safe. If we see pureness somewhere as something to be desired, the trouble starts.
Now I've come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable. There's no such thing as "fixed" culture. China is also becoming more global. Its problems are becoming international problems, becoming German problems, becoming American problems. Nothing is clear-cut. Perhaps I'll find my way - or get totally lost.
I think to deal with the situation like human crisis, 65 million people being displaced, lost their home, and with such human tragedy, has to make every level of society to be conscious and to be alert about the situation. So, the politicians and the people who make decisions very often is the one we think can make some difference. But of course they will not make a difference if the citizens or the individuals not push it or not to speak out, to possess a very strong voice about, this is not acceptable.
We never really see the global situation as a total situation. Today's political leaders are still lacking of the vision. They very often just try to cope with their own election, their own popularity, solving the problem or selling the ideas to meet their own voters. By doing that, it creates a great imbalance in terms of making deals or treaty or all those things. Even today the borders they're seeing the physical borders are very different from the political borders. Because all those powers are so connected, and you cannot even see whose interest in what move.
I think U.S. and China is a big opportunity, to be seen as partner or some kind of strategic partner maybe. But those kind of powers have a way of getting too big, then we'll have competition. And who is going to win the competition if U.S. cannot hold a strong ideology? And even the U.S. would've lost the ground to win.
If people are being abused or even killed during an arrest, this is highly disturbing.
Any politician who respects China's government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues - both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.
It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that.
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 grew up in a desert, which has no kind of imagination.
The fantasy we had with pearls was always so luxurious and unique with a kind of rareness.
I think the pearls - one is a necklace, and another you have five hundred pounds of pearls, which may be one million pearls in a bowl - really show a kind of [society] condition.
Many people are going to use [Beijing National Stadium], which makes it more meaningful. If we don't design it, somebody else has to design it.
Destroy or build. Crazy or noncrazy. I'm not nostalgic about the old city. I don't enjoy it that much.
I'm not nostalgic about the old city. I don't enjoy it that much. It was just a city with one emperor and the rest of them just rats or meaningless people.
The society was so different [in China] - it was a feudalistic society. It didn't come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
There's no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
I think Donald Trump should cool down a little bit. To pay more attention to the history. To really understand what U.S.'s value is about. I think, as a president, those things you always have to ask.
Of course, people will call you an old artist or young artist, which is just a character of you. But personally, I don't think my work and my understanding of art is so much related to being Chinese, but the character of that. Maybe it's beyond my own consciousness.
[Cultural departments] don't care about culture. Maybe they're the furthest from the people who understand culture.
