Dr. Gao Xingjian, 2000 Nobel Laureate in Literature, is a celebrated novelist, dramatist, literary critic, poet, painter, and stage and film director. He is an exceptionally versatile artist of multiple talents.

Dr. Gao was born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, China in 1940. He graduated from the Department of French, Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1962 and worked in Beijing as a translator. During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to do farm work in the countryside, and returned to Beijing in the late 1970s. His works were first published in 1980, and since then he was considered a pioneer in Chinese experimental theatre and contemporary fiction. His works created a great sensation, and were strongly criticised and eventually banned in China. His play Escape, published in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, led to a total ban of his works in China. He then settled in France as a political refugee.

In 1992, Dr. Gao was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2000 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature and Italy's Premio Letterario Feronia, and was named Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Légion d'Honneur by the president of the Republic of France. The French city of Marseilles designated 2003 as "l'anné Gao Xingjian" (Gao Xingjian Year) with year-round activities in honour of the artist. In 2006, Dr. Gao was awarded the Lions Award by the New York Public Library. He was also conferred honorary doctorates by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, l'Université de Provence, Taiwan University, Central University and Sun Yet-sen University in Taiwan.

Dr. Gao's major works include the novels Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible, short stories, theoretical works on art and literature, as well as 18 plays. His novels and theatrical works examine the existential challenges faced by mankind. In the presentation speech for his Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy acclaimed him for his "universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity". Dr. Gao's novels have been translated into 36 different languages and published worldwide, and his plays have been staged frequently in various countries around the globe. He is undoubtedly one of the world's most prominent writers of our time.

Dr. Gao's paintings have been exhibited in some 70 important expositions and at museums and galleries throughout Europe, America and Asia. His paintings are unique in style: neither concrete nor abstract; blending meditation, imagination and poetry with Chinese ink and manifesting a profound inner state of mind.