But utopias always lead to dystopias, and dictators invariably become gods who demand daily worship.

I left Beijing because I wanted to be alone and to forge my own path, but I know now that no path is solitary, we all tread across other people’s beginnings and ends.

I paint as the mood takes me- it is an emotional release. But in this society moods and images can incriminate you. Writing is much safer for me. I can hide myself behind a maze of words and the details of people’s lives.

Beauty can make a woman rich, but if she relies solely on her looks to get by, she’ll always remain under a man’s thumb.

The Chinese people have been forced to forget the Tiananmen massacre. There has been no public debate about the event, no official apology. The media aren’t allowed to mention it. Still today people are being persecuted and imprisoned for disseminating information about it.

The Beijing Olympics represent China’s grand entrance onto the world stage and confirmation of its new superpower status.

I don’t know where I am going, I just know I had to leave. Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.

My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime’s strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.

The literal meaning of the Chinese characters for revolution is elimination of life.

When history is erased, people’s moral values are also erased.