On Aug. 5, a simple four-character message appeared on Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's Twitter feed: "Wen ge hao ba" ("What's up?"). It would have been utterly unremarkable, but for two things: It was Ai's first tweet since spending three months in prison, and it was written in defiance of the Chinese government's orders to stay quiet.
A glimpse behind the closely watched door to Ai Weiwei's studio.
What's Up, Ai Weiwei?
In the studio with China's most famous dissident artist.
Ai's arrest on April 3, putatively on charges of tax evasion, was probably inevitable. The son of a famous poet who was forced into internal exile during the Cultural Revolution, the avant-gardist known for his confrontational nude self-portraits has dissidence in his DNA. A vocal democracy advocate since the 1990s, Ai infuriated the Chinese Communist Party by disavowing the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, for which he had helped design the iconic Bird's Nest stadium, and pushing for an investigation into Sichuan earthquake deaths later that year.
Throwing Ai in jail put a famous face on a worrying trend: Since this spring, the number of human rights activists, lawyers, artists, and other dissidents vanishing into government custody without explanation has quietly but sharply spiked in China. Now Ai has taken up their cause, railing against this state of affairs -- in open violation of the terms of his release. "[T]here are many hidden spots where they put people without identity," he wrote in a searing Newsweek essay. "With no name, just a number.… Only your family is crying out that you're missing."
Matthew Niederhauser
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