He has been jailed, tracked and threatened by China’s government. What was it like pay a visit home? As he publishes a polemic about surveillance and state control, he relives a momentous trip to see his mother
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i Weiwei is talking me through the decision-making process before his first visit to China in over a decade. The artist, known around the world as the most famous critic of the Chinese communist regime, had to do some fraught arithmetic before deciding to head back home.
Before boarding a flight with his son, who had never met the artist’s elderly mother, Ai thought back to his time in detention when his captors told him he would spend the next 13 years in custody on bogus charges: “They said, ‘When you come out, your son won’t recognise you.’ That was very heavy and really the only moment that touched me.”
He ended up spending several months in captivity. Lao, his son, is now 17. Ai says Lao doesn’t really need his guidance any more so he decided to book their flights and roll the dice. “People said, ‘Are you scared?’ I said, ‘No, why should I be scared?’ I’m Chinese. I have a Chinese passport. I’m entitled to go back and see my mum. So I went back.”
