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The West was a wonderful world to me. I decided then that if this is the way they did things, then I wanted to be part of it.

I'd never really experienced the West before moving to Colorado. The East Coast, where I grew up, has a lot of big cities, like Boston and New York, and is more densely populated, and I instantly fell in love with the big open spaces of the West, where you can see not just for a few miles but for a few hundred miles.

Anyone who's done their homework knows that the West was a pretty rough-and-tumble place. People from all over the world were there - and when you were there, you had to be tough as nails.

I would say that the West is very young, it's very corrupt. We're not very wise. And I think we're hopeful that there is a place that is ancient and wise and open and filled with light.

When I escaped from China and came to Hong Kong, the contrast was that China was like hell and Hong Kong like heaven. Though I was very poor, I smelled the air of freedom and was full of hope for the future. That's the way I thought heaven is.

It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others, that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the Wild West Show.

Westerns are simple stories where there's good and there's evil and where people had a sense of space and freedom. Growing up in the city, as a kid, you've never really seen that before. It's a beautiful dream to go from concrete to big skies, dirt and horses.

My history was the Western. I grew up with the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid and Bonanza. I felt as much a child of the West as someone born in Montana or Wyoming.

It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was.