World famous Chinese film director Zhang Yimou on Monday received the honorary degree for Doctor of Fine Arts from Yale University.

"It's not so easy to get such recognition," said Zhang. "The recipients every year are all elites in the world. As a Chinese, I feel so happy that I could have such an honor to receive it."

Other recipients of honorary degrees from Yale along with Zhang include Robert Alter, a noted scholar whose seminal work on the Hebrew scriptures has led to new insights by those in the academic community as well as in the community of faith, Steven Chu, the U. S. Secretary of Energy, and Ellen Johnson Sircleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia and the first woman ever elected president of an African nation.

Past recipients include Benjamin Franklin, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Steven Spielberg and Hillary Clinton, who received the honorary degree last year.

The 59-year-old Zhang made his directorial debut in 1987 with the film Red Sorghum. Since then, Zhang has established his international reputation through exploration in a variety of genres in the art world.

He said his directing of the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games helped him receive the honorary degree. "I believe they chose me because of two things: one is my years of film making experience and the film works that I produced, and the other is the opening ceremony of 2008 Olympic Games. Both are very important."

Zhang, born in 1951, is an internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker and former cinematographer, and one of the best known of the Fifth Generation of Chinese film directors. One of Zhang's recurrent themes is a celebration of the resilience, even the stubbornness, of Chinese people in the face of hardships and adversities, a theme which has occurred from "To Live" through to "Not One Less." His works are particularly noted for their use of color, as can be seen in his early trilogy or in his wuxia films such as Hero and House of Flying Daggers.