I liked the America of Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton - it was all a dream, of course, but a very alluring dream for a young man from Canton.
I arrived in the U.S.A. in 1935, to San Francisco. I got the boat from China, and I didn't even speak English. I could read a little, perhaps write a little, but that was all. It was a 17-day journey, and I learnt to speak English from the stewards.
I came, I studied architecture in America, so my technical background's completely western. But my seventeen years, the formative years of one's life, and I can't say that the Chineseness in me is not there.
The Pyramids are perfect, but you can't put the Pyramids in the middle of Manhattan. In the desert, the combination of light and form makes it perfect.
Even a beautiful piece of work can be overshadowed, destroyed, by something else.
To me, form doesn't always follow function. Form has a life of its own, and at times, it may be the motivating force in design. When you're dealing with form as a sculptor, you feel that you are quite free in attempting to mould and shape things you want to do, but in architecture, it's much more difficult because it has to have a function.
