My musician friends are banned from playing concerts in China because they share the same views as I do. My name cannot appear on the web, because my opinion is different from the Party.
China has not established the rule of law and if there is a power above the law there is no social justice. Everybody can be subjected to harm. I'm just a citizen: my life is equal in value to any other. But I'm thankful that when I lost my freedom so many people shared feelings and put such touching effort into helping me.
I also have to speak out for people around me who are afraid, who think it is not worth it or who have totally given up hope. So I want to set an example: you can do it and this is OK, to speak out.
You only have temporary curiosity, amusement, and challenges, but that does not necessarily mean you are really convinced that it's necessary or that it's not even worth to do it. It's just a way you have to set up some kind of activities to follow your instincts or your curiosities.
I think you can give meaning to any condition; you can be poor or unsuccessful or be so-called successful. But I don't think that it would give an individual human being a better condition.
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 have always stated I designed the stadium as a toilet seat. I don't care if this is a great cultural event or a national symbol. It has nothing to do with me. It deals with the city.
The whole Chinese system - not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society - is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information. That's why the country can't face up to open competition - unless it resorts to measures like North Korea.
When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.
As a person, I was born to give out my opinions. By giving out my opinions, I realize who I am. As long as I can communicate, I'm not so lonely. If I cannot travel, or do art, or have company, if they take away all my belongings, it doesn't matter at all.
My image of what a city should be - the super-rich and all the poor and desperate and the people who have some kind of a desire. It's a surviving game, people trying to survive on many different levels.