1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Ai Weiwei is a fascinating character. As an artist and activist, patriotic Chinese and critic of the CCP, a dissident and self-proclaimed hooligan he does not easily fit into existing stereotypes of artists. A classical loner painting water lilies in his garden, an industrial manager conducting his minions to draw dots, a postmodern concept-thinker philosophizing about bananas on walls - Ai is none of that.

It is exactly this complexity that makes "1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows" so fascinating. Ai starts with the story of his father - a poet and intellectual who lived and suffered through the Cultural Revolution - before turning to his own life. Studying arts in the US, he was not in China when many of his fellow students fought and died for a free China on Tiananmen Square in 1989. After coming back to China, he found a voice in the emerging micro-blogging scene, received official acclaim by supporting the design of the "Bird's Nest" prior to the 2008 Olympics, before shifting to civic activism. The book focuses on the crucial years leading to his arrest in 2011, when he left China, throwing a light on what it means to stand in for courage and responsibility in a country that becomes ever more authoritarian.

The book is very well complemented by the grandiose documentary "Never Sorry" by the American directress Alison Klayman. Head over to my homepage for a review: bensahlmueller.com/ai-weiwei-never-sorry!

Ai Weiwei's memoir is half a biography of his father, a poet and intellectual who lived through the communist revolution in China, and suffered in exile during the Cultural Revolution. Weiwei's reflections overlap with his father's, since as a child he lived in the same dark home. He describes how he grew into art, and gradually came to critique the government, and became an artist dissident with a large and vocal following. Ai Weiwei's 81 days in detention and four years of house arrest are a major subject of focus.

In 1984, George Orwell depicts his protagonist sparring with his captor, the intellectual and elloquent party leader, O'brien. In that exchange, Winston is poorly equiped to articulate principles of freedom, having grown up with only a dim understanding of what life outside the party could be, while O'brien runs circles around him, confounding him with twisted logic and the hopelessness of trying to find an objective reality. Ai Weiwei's real-life conversations with his interregators feel somewhat similar, in that many of his captors appear to be well educated (citing Longfellow and other literary figures) and challenge the underpinning's of Ai's work, but Ai Weiwei was much better equiped to defend himself, articulate his ideas and critique the state's abuse of power. I recall Wael Ghonim's memoir shared a similar theme in his own questioning by authorities in Cairo.

That these real-life dissedents grew up under harsh government control and still more than possess the tools to dissent is heartening.