Whatever China I'd been born into, I would probably still have become a painter - I loved sketching portraits as a child, and began art classes at the age 7. But if China hadn't been under Maoist rule, I might never have become a writer.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If I hadn't been a designer, I'd have been a painter. I began as a painter and learned the craft of pottery in order to support myself.
I think I would have been a writer, anyhow, in the sense of having written a story every now and then, or continued writing poetry. But it was the war experience and the two novels I wrote about Vietnam that really got me started as a professional writer.
Every President that went to China, I would meet them and have dinner and talk about the past and the future. That was in the '70s.
I would have been a visual artist. When I was in high school, that was one of the things... I had to make a decision what I was going to go to college for, and at the time, I also painted and sculpted. I got more attention for my performing, so I thought that was a better idea.
I would have loved to have been a painter or a sculptor. I'm still fascinated by those things.
When I was a kid, I would make kung fu movies with the kids in the neighborhood, and I would be the guy behind the camera directing everybody, but they were all very silly little shorts and comedy bits.
Until 1954, I'd only ever thought of being a painter, but I earned my money when and where I could. You could say I drifted into writing.
I'd always loved writing, in the same way that I'd loved painting. I wouldn't have seen it as a career.
I would like to be a philosopher in ancient Athens and a poet in ancient China.
Pretty much anybody who does creative work in China navigates the gray zone. People aren't clear about where the line is any more, beyond which life gets really nasty and you become a dissident without having intended ever to be one.
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