It's true that misunderstanding and lack of understanding are often themes in my fiction, but I am grateful for the moments when true understanding is achieved, especially between writer and reader. It's miraculous.

The idea that somehow the way forward is to abandon the past, to me, is preposterous and both undesirable and unrealistic.

When I act as a translator, I am really doing a performance for my fellow Anglophone readers in the West.

I still think in a parallel universe, I became a mathematician.

I've never really had much of a career plan, and interesting opportunities kept cropping up.

Writing careers are short. For every 100 writers, 99 never get published. Of those who do, only one in every hundred gets a career out of it, so I count myself as immensely privileged.

Helping doing business easier, we choose the name Alibaba because it is a global company. It is founded in China, but it was created for the world.

We believe that two people who have worked together for more than 10 years and been in the company for more than 15 years would be able to work very well as a team.