Dai Sijie writes and films Chinese stories that are lyrically beautiful and also popular with audiences in Western countries. Now his underutilized skill is put to use in projects designed with cross-cultural appeal, writes Raymond Zhou.

Dai Sijie is like a bridge. He connects the medium of literature with that of film; and at the same time he links up the world of China, where he was born and grew up, with that of France, where he attained fame, as both a novelist and a film director.

I had always wanted to talk to Dai ever since I saw Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress a decade ago. Another reason is that he is a Chinese expatriate who mastered a foreign language, French in this case, to the point of publishing professional writings in it - a point that is inspiring to me.