Born on this day in Ganzhou, eastern China, writer and artist Gao Xingjian (1940–) endured political repression and personal exile to become a voice of freedom and resilience.

“Love is so holy, so confusing,” he once wrote. “It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?”

His early writing was banned during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), and he was forced to work for six years as a farm laborer. Still, he wrote in secret. “Even during the most difficult times in China, I carried on writing secretly, without thinking that one day I would get published.”

In 1987, Gao left China and settled in France. There, he continued to write with deep passion and clarity. “Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature,” he explained.

His masterwork, Soul Mountain (1991), written after a miraculous recovery from a lung cancer diagnosis, is a spiritual journey through isolation, memory, and the will to survive.

“I realized that Chinese history was a history of power,” he said. “I became very interested in the sources of Chinese culture and I traveled to where the novel takes place to investigate for myself.”

In 2000, Gao became the first Chinese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He also creates Zen-inspired paintings using India ink on rice paper. “Painting starts where words fail or are inadequate in expressing what one wants to express,” he said.