"For my book "In China", I kept a graphic diary. However, it was more about taking notes than an attempt to put any good drawings on paper. I’m not sure whether any ‘travel sketches’ really emerged during my stay in Chengdu. I would say that these were purely the preliminary steps on the way to my book. The final drawings were produced much after my trip and have little in common with photographs, I think."
"For me, drawing is something routine, not something ‘special’ that is related to a particular feeling or a particular attitude."
"...Yeung HokTak, whose graphic novel – How Blue Was My Valley – was way ahead its time. Chihoi Lee introduced me to the work of this Hong Kong-based illustrator during my first visit to China in 2004."
I would like to travel...
"I don’t have any such desire. I find the idea of ‘still’ wanting to travel to a place and to ‘capture’ something there rather strange. In the case of "In China" – and because a journey underpinned the idea – I chose the genre of the ‘travelogue’, but it was my first travelogue and I would also think of it as the last. To give literary expression to the experience of the journey, without eliminating the experience of 'foreignness' that tends towards a false romanticism or a political agenda, is what I have tried to do here. However, when I started working on the book, I had completely different ideas and concepts, which I discarded in the course of a full five years because they turned out to be worthless."
My reading for my next trip will include......
"Depends on where I go. At the moment, I have no great travel plans."