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When I made 'Hard Boiled,' I had no idea that it would be released to an international audience. I just wanted to make a film to team up my two favorite actors, Tony Leung and Chow Yun-Fat.

We watched a lot of Hong Kong action movies in my house when I was growing up.

My films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be.

There are many kinds of movies in Hong Kong. Some are commercial and others are more artistic.

Hong Kong cinema is something you can't duplicate anyway.

My career in the movie business began in Hong Kong, my heart has always been tied to Asia, and it is immensely gratifying to see international recognition for Asian cinema as a whole.

English is my second language, but in Hong Kong, they don't know that I'm from China. They think I'm from Hollywood because all the films they see are from here. China and Hong Kong are very different places, but they're starting to merge. Still the culture is very different.

I've made the film 'The Good, the Bad, the Weird,' which was an Eastern Western film. Obviously, the Western film is American and American only; there's really no Western genre over in Asia.

It's possible to be hard-boiled and not noir, just as it's possible to be noir and not hard-boiled. And it is possible to be both. People debate endlessly what is hard-boiled and what is noir.