This is Donna Miller and Kitten with another book for your consideration. I can’t remember how I learned about this book, but since we are so interested in China I wanted more information.
The book is 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows by Ai WeiWei, a memoir. Ai WeiWei is an artist and his father Ai Qing was a poet during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Ai Qing was China’s most celebrated poet, but was branded a “rightest” and banished to “Little Siberia” to do hard labor, cleaning toilets. Ai WeiWei went with his father though he was just a child. Even with their difficult existence the father kept writing his poetry under different names.
In “Little Siberia “ most of the people lived in caves. Ai Qing had thirteen communal toilets to clean. This was mainly a row of squatting stations above a cesspit. There was no toilet paper so various things were used, like cornstalks, empty cigarette packs. Protruding wall corners were also used.
The 550,000 artists in the time of Mao were considered “rightists” and had to receive physical punishment. They were to be reformed through hard labor. Twenty years later only 100,000 would still be alive.
When Mao died in 1976 China went through more than 50 political campaigns, each more violent than the last. A long with unrest in China, they began having problems with the Soviet Union. The Soviets placed a million men on their side of the border with China.
In 1972 a surprising event took place when Richard Nixon who was our president at the time went to Beijing. This signaled a sudden thaw in decades of the Cold War. The Chinese people were in shock. Seven months later the premier of Japan arrived in Beijing for talks. The premier asked if Ai Qing the famous poet was still alive, he wanted to meet him. That was not possible because Ai Qing did nor live at that time in Beijing.
When Ai WeiWei was 19 he and his father and mother were in Beijing right after a big earthquake and the people were all sleeping outside. Everyone was afraid to go into their homes for fear of being crushed.
In Beijing Ai Qing was able to write his poetry under his own name again, he did his best to make up for lost time. Between August 1979 and 1982 he published 100 poems and was able to travel within China and internationally. Ai Qing was asked to read a poem at an event in Munich. Ten years later a young man read the same poem at the foot of the Berlin Wall on the day it came down.
This new freedom was wonderful but with the new regime the future was more uncertain than ever. The memories of the past made it impossible to identify with China’s new realities. Father and son came to feel that the only out was to leave the country.
Ai WeiWei became more unhappy and longed for more freedom to pursue his art. In 1981 he filed an application to pursue self-funded study abroad, which almost no one even tried. The Film Academy turned him down. So, he threatened to quit film school. The school then went to the Ministry of Culture for advice. They approved his application but with strings. He had to be schooled in “patriotic education” and “training in keeping secrets”. Ai WeiWei wasn’t going to America because he wanted the Western lifestyle, but he couldn’t stand living in Beijing anymore.
He arrived in New York and got jobs cleaning and yard work and signed up for a class in English. He found out a friend from China was also in New York and when she decided to go to Berkeley he followed. He applied to the Parsons School of Design and got a scholarship.
“Ai WeiWei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his life story and that of his father whose creativity was stifled.” There is much more to Ai WeiWei’s life and art in his book.
Thank you for your time and keep reading. Donna and Kitten.
