1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: The story of two lives, one nation, and a century of art under tyranny

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Here, through the sweeping lens of his own and his father's life, Ai Weiwei tells an epic tale of China over the last 100 years, from the Cultural Revolution to the modern-day Chinese Communist Party. He survived in New York by doing part-time jobs and becoming a street artist sketching tourists in Times Square.

Advised merely that his travel "could damage state security", he was escorted to a van by officials, after which he disappeared for eighty-one days.Once an intimate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution. His “intolerable insolence” meant that Ai Weiwei was fated to be left with only two paths forward: either being crushed at home or fleeing into foreign exile. 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. This selection is drawn from more than 220 previously unpublished photographs of Ai Weiwei’s studio. Here, for the first time, 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.

What makes this memoir so absorbing is that it traces China’s tumultuous recent history through the eyes of its most renowned twentieth-century poet, Ai Qing, and his son, Ai Weiwei, now equally renowned in the global art world. His statement informs this comprehensive book that features sculptural installations, photographs, and videos from every aspect of the artist’s fortyyear career and touches on many contemporary social issues.Ai Weiwei’s memoir is an effort to fill this lacuna, to spell out who his father was and who he now is himself as a person and a father. 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. His creative life, which began in 1978 when he enrolled on an animation course at the Beijing Film Academy, had taken time to find its footing.