Ang Lee () (born October 23, 1954) is an
Academy Award-winning
film director from
Taiwan.
Early life
Education
Ang Lee was born in the town of
Chaochou in
Pingtung,
[Ho Yi. Family and friends praise Ang Lee's quiet dedication. Taipei Times. March 7, 2006.] a southern agricultural
county in
Taiwan. He grew up in a household that put heavy emphasis on education and the
Chinese classics. Both of Ang Lee's parents moved to Taiwan from
communist China following the
Chinese Nationalists' defeat in the
Chinese Civil War in 1949. Lee's father, a native of
Jiangxi Province in southern China, imbued his children with studying Chinese culture and art, especially
calligraphy. Lee's grandparents died during the
Cultural Revolution because they were accused of being one of the
Five Black Categories ()
Lee studied in the
National Tainan First Senior High School where his father was a former principal. He was expected to pass the annual Joint College/University Entrance Examination, the only route to a university education in Taiwan. But after failing the Exam twice, to the disappointment of his father, he entered a three-year college, National Arts School (now reorganized and expanded as
National Taiwan University of Arts) and graduated in 1975. His father had wanted him to become a professor, but he had become interested in drama and the arts at college. This early frustration set his career on the path of performance art. Seeing
Ingmar Bergman's film
The Virgin Spring (1960) was a formative experience for him.
[[www.studio360.org/episodes/2008/08/08# Interview from Studio 360]