Dissident Chinese artist defiant in first interview since his release

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

07/09/2012

Dissident Chinese artist defiant in first interview since his release

(CNN) -- Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei pledged to continue
fighting injustice in his first interview since his release from detention.

The outspoken critic of the nation's human rights record was arrested in April, detained for three months and charged with tax evasion.

"Of course you might live an easier life if you abandon some rights. But
there are so many injustices, and limited educational resources," Ai told the
Chinese Communist party's Global Times newspaper. "They all diminish happiness.
I will never stop fighting injustice."

The paper describes Ai as "feisty" in his first interview since being
released from prison in June after a three-month detention on tax evasion
charges that some observers alleged were trumped up.

Continued at CNN

Jul 9, 2012 7:59:46 AM | Activist/Dissident, Current Affairs