I deliberately use that image of the inside connected to the outside as Chia constantly referred to internal and external worlds during our conversation. When I pointed this out, he thought about it for a while (he is an exceptionally restful person to interview because he spends so long pondering each reply), and sounding surprised said, 'Yes, you're right.' I can't believe that no one has ever mentioned this before, or that he hadn't analysed himself in that way. But Chia is perhaps the kind of man who keeps such things to himself. Either that or he was just being politely agreeable. He struck me as a very private, public man.

A psychologist would say that sprang from his childhood. He was brought up by a single parent: 'My mother never read a book in her life. At least not in front of me. My mother did not want me to read anything other than school books. She'd find that objectionable, actually. She was very strict, bedtime lights out, no encouragement.' So reading was forbidden fruit? 'A lesson for overachieving parents,' Chia murmured wryly.

Naturally he became a compulsive reader. I liked the idea of this strange duplicity: pretending not to read while haunting the stalls which rented out books in the days before Hong Kong had many public libraries. Of course that was when he first discovered that he could incorporate new worlds within himself, which evidently became vital to him. Years later he went to Paris and when asked why he didn't choose London instead, he said, 'I enjoyed the insulation. If you didn't speak fluent French, living in Paris ...' (and here he gave a sudden laugh) 'could be quite wonderful.' Wasn't a longing to swaddle oneself a bizarre reason to travel? 'Well, you have the external experience of the city but you can limit the interaction. That had something to do with Hong Kong where the outside world impinges on the inside world. In Paris I was selective. I took in what I decided to take in.' Chia lived in Europe for three years, working as a gardener in Belgium ('I didn't want to wash dishes'), doing translation and adaptation for Oxford University Press while internalising a love of art and literature.

The miracle, in a way, is that he ever returned to Hong Kong. 'I came back not knowing that I was coming back,' he said. The Arts Centre was being built, he walked in to have a look, bumped into a tutor from his days at HKU who hired him as an administrator the next day. His reasoning, again, was not predictable. 'I thought, what would the equivalent of the Arts Centre be in Paris? I thought - the Pompidou Centre. Would I accept a job there? And the answer was yes.' In 1982 he took on the Fringe and moved into what is now the Fringe Club in 1984. When describing the dank, cat-infested, smelly horror which the building was then, he casually added 'tree roots had come down into what's now the Star Alliance Theatre. It was like a cave'. I couldn't help thinking that was pretty smooth product placement, so I asked about the ubiquitousness of the sponsorship, and he replied: 'In the business world, sponsors understand that the vitality a city has is not necessarily coming from the museum and opera and ballet. I'm not putting those things down, but when you look at meeting challenges and solving problems, these are questions asked by people whose minds are very active, questioning, young.' I opened my mouth and Chia immediately said, 'I know what your question is.' What is it? 'About age.' I said that I merely wondered what the Benny Chia of 2000 would say if he could meet the Benny Chia of 1982. 'I would be very happy to talk to him,' said Chia. 'I think the Benny 2000 understands himself and the world around him a lot better. But he has a long way to go.' Is Benny 2000 good at daily practicalities? 'No, no. But I understand why they have to do things in a certain way. You have to open punctually every day, you have to put food on the table, you open the show, someone does something ... I wouldn't call that bureaucracy. You mustn't fall in love with the River Kwai complex - so taken up with the administration itself, with the bridge - that anything that challenges it you would protect with your own life.' Chia is married with two adult boys, but when asked what he did when he was not at the Fringe, he said, 'Everyday I want to be in touch with myself. I'm not being flippant. That's all we have to ourselves.' Perhaps he still craves some degree of swaddling. He lives in Happy Valley and occasionally visits the racecourse to feel the space. 'When you enter, on the right there's the cemetery, dark, in touch with mortality. On the left, it's a valley of hope to a lot of people. It's a portal which tells you a lot about life.' On the shelf behind Chia is a painting of a bandaged head, introspective to the point of claustrophobia. Beside his desk, there's a landscape painting, vast to the point of agoraphobia. Sometimes it's facile to find metaphors in artwork when you're interviewing someone, but I felt that these extremes expressed something of Chia's two worlds. When I told him that, he looked at the swathed head and observed, 'We're all a bit like that. There is a fear of showing the real face.'