YOU FIRST WENT TO CALIFORNIA AS A STUDENT IN THE EARLY 1980S, WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST EXPOSURE TO HOLLYWOOD?
When I first got to America I didn’t have a lot of money to go to the movies, so I’d save up and treat myself. I was mesmerised by a great film-noir thriller, Body Heat (and) I remember going to see Chariots of Fire. Fresh off the boat, these movies had a powerful impact on me.
WHAT KIND OF MOVIES DO YOU ENJOY TODAY?
Recently, I loved The Lives of Others (also known as Das Leben der Anderen, an Oscar-winning German drama film) and Julian Schnabel’s Diving Bell and Butterfly.
WHO DO YOU ENJOY WATCHING ON SCREEN?
I love Johnny Depp and the young Chinese actress Zhao Xun, but really there are so many I could name.
YOU TRAVEL BACK TO SHANGHAI OFTEN WITH YOUR FAMILY, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR HOMETOWN?
If I go to where I grew up and where I went to school, the streets are completely different but there are older parts of town I like which have kept their history and character. When I go to Pudong, it looks very exotic to me; it’s not like my city.
I love Shanghai. If I don’t see Shanghai for a couple of months, I start to miss it. It’s a very complex city, like a great film set. There are many different levels to Shanghai; you find the cleanest streets next to the seediest streets, one wrong turn and you end up somewhere you don’t want to be. It’s a richly textured city. People there are exciting and very smart.
HAVE YOU EVER HAD INSPIRATION FROM YOUR TRAVELS?
I went to Berlin to be on the Berlin Film Festival jury in 1996. I took a friend’s novella (Yan Geling’s Celestial Bath) with me to read on the way. At the festival, I felt many of the films were gloomy and empty to me and it struck me that I had found something I wanted to say. On the plane from Berlin back to San Francisco, I started turning the novella into a screenplay for the film Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl and it became my directorial debut.
YOU LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO, DO YOU FIND THAT A BOHEMIAN CITY?
San Francisco is a sleepy little town. I think that New York and Los Angeles would be more artistically stimulating. I went there because I got married and raised my kids there. It’s definitely great for raising kids.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF SINGAPORE?
I love Singapore. I find every excuse to come back here. I love the life here, especially the food. As an outsider, it seems to me that life is good, peaceful. I was walking around Clarke Quay yesterday, it’s almost like a movie set.
ARE THERE ANY SPECIAL MEMORIES OF LOCATIONS WHERE YOU’VE SHOT FILMS?
About two years ago, I shot a film in a little town, Jingning in Zhejiang province, very close to Fujian province. The mountains were pristine. We drank from the mountain springs, it was so fragrant. We picked wild mushrooms and vegetables and ate wild boar. We did river rafting, the river was so clean. There was a tiny old temple on top of the mountain.
I also met up with a troupe of travelling performers. They go into these small towns all over the country and they were wildly entertaining. Jingning wasn’t a developed spot but it was very memorable.
