Evan Osnos Quotes

I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but have returned continually.

Tiananmen Square in early 1989 attracted many dreamers like Ma Jian, who returned from Hong Kong to a one-room shack in Beijing in order to join the student protests.

Some of the areas in China have been under very grave water scarcity: for example, the north China plain; they are facing a very serious water shortage. Per capita levels have dropped to very serious levels, including in Beijing.

Once I became interested in China, I flew to Beijing in 1996 to spend half a year studying Mandarin. The city stunned me.

In my fifth year in Beijing, I moved into a one-story brick house beside the Confucius Temple, a seven-hundred-year-old shrine to China's most important philosopher.

My grandfather was originally from the south of China before he emigrated to Malaysia pre-World War II. And I wanted to learn more about the history of the country of my ancestors. I knew I wanted a narrative set in contemporary Beijing. I was really interested in the effect of the rapid social and economic change on ordinary citizens in China.

The Olympics brought a lot of development to Beijing, but I don't see that there have been any changes to human rights as a result of the Olympics.

If you go to Tiananmen Square, or go to any public area in China, you will hear my music at some point.

In the final years of his life, when former Communist Party Chief Zhao Ziyang lived under house arrest, in Beijing, his aging friends resorted to donning white doctors' coats in order to slip past the guards stationed outside his home.

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can't breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

The human rights record within China seems to rise and fall over time, but it's very clear that in the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics and since then, there's been a greater intolerance of dissent and the human rights record of China has been going in the wrong direction.

The world awaits Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Olympics, an occasion which will bring into the global spotlight the dramatic advances China is making in enhancing the quality of life for its people.

Beijing is my favorite city in China.

The future of the world's film industry is in China because we have 1.3 billion people.

All my good movies, nobody sees.

This week, the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years. People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China's relationship with the outside world.

It's pretty easy to make a film in China. A few years ago I just walked into the office and let them know I wanted to make a movie called 'Red Cliff' and they were so excited. They said, 'Let's do it!' It's that simple.

Sealed Management

The city of Peking [Beijing] is a novel site for a European. He will not weary of admiring the manner in which the nearly 3 million people gathered within its vast enclosure are ruled by the police as schoolchildren by their masters. People coming and going fill streets wider than the Luxembourg Palace in Paris. The crowd is beyond belief, yet peace reigns everywhere.

Unlike 30 years ago, people now admire the wealth of the West and lament the poverty of China; they stare awestruck at the power of the Western armies and scorn the cowardice of the Imperial troops; they enjoy the fairness and ease of the Customs and detest the fault-finding of China’s own tax collectors; they praise the orderly governance of the Western-Administered cities, and resent the harassment of our officials, big and small.

I am a student of cinema, and I love filmmaking of all kinds.

I'd love to spend a month in China.

I know it will be the thing that'll be my epitaph: They won't say anything about my movies, I'll be this guy in a rubber mask.

I've always been a fan of martial arts actor Bruce Lee. His films made me want to go to China one day.