" Originality is a fetish of the people who want to control the art market and the publishing industry.
It’s also a fetich of academics, particularly the males and the old farts.
What I was really interested in was the sweating workers in the Chinese villages. It was their lives, their anonymity, their way of looking at western classics, and their purely pragmatic attitude.
I love being with those artisans and feeling their energy and their lack of self consciousness. They were not precise in any way about their works, or about their life, but they were full of heart. And at the same time they were not clinging to their achievements. They are part of the flow of life. I have come from the same culture, but I feel I cannot make this clear, or make westerners understand. The western language and mentality did not allow me to do it.
I feel I could do that in England but not here in America, where I feel I’m second class citizen not because people don’t understand Chinese culture (there are so many of us), but even after they understood it, they still decided to think we are second class citizen. "

― Xiaolu Guo , A Lover's Discourse