In Taiwan, Cloud Gate are national heroes. The government proclaimed August 21 Cloud Gate Day, and a street in Taipei has been renamed Cloud Gate Lane. The troupe performs at venues ranging from the National Theatre to outdoor shows that draw audiences of 60,000. The formation of Cloud Gate 2, which has 20 dance schools throughout Taiwan, has further cemented its position as the island's premier dance group.

Cloud Gate, who tour extensively and will be in Macau later this month, have also been acclaimed overseas. Last year, The New York Times called Lin's Moon Water 'the best production in New York. [It's] not about meditation. It is meditation.' Set to the melodies of J.S. Bach's cello suites, it's a slow dance that displays martial-arts movements and poses reminiscent of Chinese opera - slow until a burst of innovation and surprises fill the theatre at the end.

The name of the troupe refers to what is regarded as China's oldest dance, dating back 5,000 years, but Cloud Gate combines old and new, east and west. Aboriginal Taiwanese songs, Chinese calligraphy, martial arts and the strains of western classical music can come together with such images as three tonnes of rice strewn on the stage, or a stage glistening under a layer of water. The eclectic nature of the work comes from Taiwan.

Lin describes his homeland as 'having a junk yard for a personality. It's a laboratory. Taiwan has got to be one of the freest places in the world. For example, if you stage a play in which everyone is naked, you might not even get a mention in the newspapers. Here, anything and everything goes.' For Lin, Taiwan is 'a melting pot of many different influences and cultures. There's the legacy left by Japan's 50-year occupation, an aboriginal culture and a large amount of western influences.'

Much of Lin's inspiration also comes from his trips around Asia - in particular, India, which he visits regularly, taking holidays in ashrams. 'India is rich in all aspects apart from financial ones,' he says. 'It's a place where you can rediscover the basics of the human condition. It's a place which makes me humble'.

There's a definite spiritual aspect to Cloud Gate's work. The troupe's 25 members are all trained in tai chi, other martial arts and meditation, which Lin feels are important for dancers. 'I discovered the power of meditation after I attended qi gong classes and, from then on, my dancers have had mediation instruction, which is one of the most important forms of training. The scientific control of breathing correctly turns the dancers' bodies to water first and then to stone and steel.'

Lin says meditation can also help protect dancers' bodies, and help them fully realise their potential. The martial arts are important to him, too, not just for their aesthetic qualities, but also as part of the dancer's training. 'Your mind is centred and you have to bend your knees and perform movements that are entirely different to the discipline of ballet, which is rigidly straight,' he says. According to Lin, there's no narrative element to his dances because 'you don't go to see dance to try to fish out some sort of literary thing; you go to experience colour and sound and energy. I started off by being narrative. That was the writer in me coming out. But now, since I frequently look outside my apartment window and see the river below, watching how it flows, I try to create my dances to mirror this.'

Nevertheless, there are literary inspirations in Lin's Songs of Wanderers, a Zen-like interpretation of Herman Hesse's novel of religious searching, Siddhartha. While addressing universal themes of struggle, freedom and spiritual enlightenment, Lin's compositions sometimes allude to historical events such as the Taiwan massacres of 1947 and the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, as demonstrated in Nine Songs.

Lin denies that his productions may be a little high brow for the average viewer, and says that, especially in Taiwan, audiences are becoming more sophisticated. During the troupe's annual five-month tour, the performances remain the same, regardless of the country, and Lin says that audience reactions remain the same. He particularly enjoys performing in Hong Kong, which he calls 'the fairy godmother of Cloud Gate'. It was the first place the troupe visited on its maiden tour, and it sold out for an entire month.

Lin, who was born in 1947, first became interested in dance when he was five and first watched the 1948 classic The Red Shoes, a film he saw 11 times before he was six. More generally, he attributes his interest in the arts to his highly cultured parents - a civil-servant father and housewife mother. By 14, he was studying Chinese opera movements and paying for his first ballet lessons with money he earned by publishing short stories. However, at his parents' behest, he studied journalism rather than dance. By his early 20s, he had two best-selling books under his belt. He says his love for calligraphy, evident in many of his dances, stems from his time as a writer. 'There are a lot of similarities between a dancer and a calligraphy brush, and the shapes they can make,' he says. The real turning point in Lin's career was when he met the choreographer Martha Graham, with whom he trained before creating Cloud Gate in 1973.

In 1983, he founded the dance department of Taiwan's National Institute of the Arts, becoming dean of its graduate programme in 1993. 'My dancers are friends - part of the family,' he says. They train together eight hours a day, Monday to Friday, and Lin has the highest respect for them. 'I worship them,' he says. 'They're the best models of strength, beauty and sensitivity. They're moving poets ... I know their lives, their joys and the problems. It's out of this that I create.'