Here is the story of a childhood spent in desolate exile after his father, Ai Qing, once China's most celebrated poet, fell foul of the authorities. After all, as Deng Xiaoping began opening China up, more and more foreigners were arriving in Beijing and asking after its most celebrated twentieth-century poet. This book, published in association with the artist, draws on the full breadth of Ai weiwei’s architectural, installation and activist work, including drawings and plans from a huge range of international projects, with particular emphasis on his use of space.

Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career. Then the sons and daughters of many other exiled “literary types” who’d once been regular guests in the Ai home began ransacking their house.As I read 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, I felt as if I’d finally come upon the chronicle of modern China for which I’d been waiting since I first began studying this elusive country six decades ago.

The works featured in the book include Straight, Ai’s gigantic installation made from 150 tons of rebar salvaged from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which comments on governmental corruption and negligence, and Sunflower Seeds for which the artist filled the enormous Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern with 100,000,000 porcelain seeds, each made by Chinese craftspeople. When the Wenchuan earthquake hit Sichuan Province in 2008, Ai Weiwei attacked the shoddy “bean curd” construction of the collapsed schools and buildings in which thousands of children died, as well as the corrupt officials who had allowed them to go up. Desperate for a different environment, Ai Weiwei decided to seek permission for “self-funded study” abroad.A sense of belonging is central to one’s identity, for only with it can one find a spiritual refuge,” he wistfully notes. The little he wrote about himself and his early years is entwined with details of his father's life. In 2009 the artist was beaten and his team locked in their hotel rooms after they travelled to Chengdu in China’s southwest to support a fellow activist on trial. An illuminating through-line emerges in the many parallels Ai traces between his life and his father’s.

While his father was cleaning latrines, scraping feces that had frozen “into icy pillars,” 10-year-old Ai built the stove, fetched water from the well and endured a life that resembled “an open-ended course in wilderness survival training, if we were lucky enough to survive. Focus moments include his international breakthrough in the early 2000s, his porcelain Sunflower Seeds at the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, his response to the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, and his police detention in 2011. Held in a small room with sealed windows, he was interrogated daily, the questions circling continuously around the same false charges of inciting unrest and evading tax. Their life story might feel bleak, especially his father’s life who was wrongfully convicted and exiled for years on end during the cultural revolution, but this is also the story of a family which resiliently survived the oppression and never let go of their artistic expression or principles. The Chinese government, accordingly, seeks to erase individual space, suppress free expression, and distort our memory.The best measure of the artist Ai Weiwei was made not by any critic but by an interrogator working for China’s state security forces. From then on, that force would gradually extend its command of my body and mind, until it matured into a form that even the strongest enemy would find intimidating. It is powerful and interesting, a unique blend of historical fact, memoir, and philosophical thoughts.