'I have to have coffee in the morning. I rise about 6am and grab some French roast, grind it myself and put an espresso maker on the stove. Usually a few double or triple shots. I don't eat anything. I don't find it hard to wake up - it just helps me focus.
I settle down to the paper - The New York Times if I'm in Manhattan or a local paper if I'm away. I like to know what's going on around the world and I check out the sports - I'm a Knicks [basketball] and a Yankees [baseball] fan. I usually check e-mails and make some phone calls about the day ahead. I leave for rehearsals before 10am. They last all day, until about 5pm. It's a funny life - I live in the dark, getting up early, riding the subway and then sitting in theatres under artificial lights.
I live in Greenwich Village, right on Washington Square, and have been here 15 years. I feel like a true New Yorker - I know all the bars, delis, concert halls, shops. I don't feel like a part of any country, just a New Yorker.
At the moment, I'm doing a film with Meryl Streep and Val Kilmer. It's called Dark Matter, my first feature-length [film], as I've only done documentaries in France before. We're in pre-production, which means a lot of script work, riding around checking out locations and landscapes. I feel car sick most of the time. The film is a true story, based on a top physics student from China who went to the United States. It's a tragic tale but an interesting journey. He ended up killing himself. [Mainland actor] Liu Ye plays the lead. He was hard to get but he loved the script; he really identifies with the story.
I'm sorry to say I have an affinity with death. It features heavily in all my work - plays, opera, film, music. I don't think anything can be more profound than death. I want work that moves me, and death does. I feel sympathy ... human frailty really touches me. I think that comes from my upbringing during the Cultural Revolution. My mother was shot in front of me and I lived with funeral singers when my father was sent to work on the land, so I have been brought up with death. I never used to talk about this. But I guess my work became more relevant, more personal and journalists started asking questions. I talk about it now ... well, sometimes.
When you have been brought up in a place where there are 1.2 billion people, it is hard to be an individual - it's difficult to rise above that. When people try and fail that challenge, it can be hard. Death is the only way out for some. I go back to China about three times a year and always think about people's challenges in China today, where they will end up.
I like New York. Some people think I fled to the west, that I defected, but that's too strong a word. I was always trying to get a visa. I tried for years. But then I met my wife, Heather, a poet, and while we were in the US, [the] Tiananmen [Square crackdown] happened and I couldn't go back. We haven't got any kids, I'm not sure I want them - the world is too populated as it is; too many people needing too many rice bowls. I worry about that.