In 1983 Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer and painter Gao Xingjian was
diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death. But six weeks later, a
second examination revealed there was no cancer--he had won "a reprieve from
death" and had been thrown back into the world of the living. Faced with a
repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell on a prison farm, Gao
fled Beijing. He traveled to the remote mountains and ancient forests of central
China and from there back to the east coast, a journey of fifteen thousand
kilometers over a period of five months. The result of this epic voyage