Readers do not need to know anything about Ai Weiwei as an artist or activist before reading his memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, but afterward they will feel as if they know him as a person. This is the goal of the book.
While imprisoned by the Chinese government in 2011, Ai Weiwei thought a lot about his father, the famous poet Ai Qing – the similar trajectories their lives have taken, the impact his father had on him. Wishing he had asked his father more about his life, Ai decided to write this book as a way for his son to get to know him when he is gone. Perhaps this is why, despite spanning three continents and more than a century, it doesn’t lack depth. 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows is an expansive and engrossing memoir in which Ai Weiwei weaves together his own life story with his father’s and history of the Chinese Communist Party.
The first part of the memoir is dedicated to telling his father’s life story, interspersed with Ai Weiwei’s childhood memories. With rich details and plenty of historical context, readers follow Ai Qing from his birth in a small town in China, to Paris as a young man studying art, into a communist commune, through the Chinese Communist Party’s rise to power, to his exile at the far end of country, and ultimately to his death as a celebrated elder poet. Throughout these events, Ai develops his commitment to writing and freedom of expression. He stays true to his values at the expense of his own safety and devotes himself to writing even when no one will publish his work. By devoting so much of the book to Ai Qing’s life, Ai Weiwei shows the impact his father had on him and allows readers to know the kind of person his father was.
This section of the book is particularly captivating. It flashes between Ai Qing’s life events and Ai Weiwei’s childhood in exile, which creates a faster pace and more intrigue than if the events were told chronologically. Ai Qing’s life is fascinating on its own, but Ai Weiwei paints a fuller picture of his father by contextualizing his life with historical events and his own life.
The second half of the book follows Ai Weiwei through adulthood, walking down a path reminiscent of his father’s. Ai moves to New York City in the 80s to escape the government’s increasing suppression of artists and study art. Though he feels aimless while living in the USA, he discovers the work of Duchamp and Warhol and meets Alan Ginsberg, Martin Wong, and Tehching Hsieh, in whom he finds inspiration or shared values. Twelve years later he moves back to Beijing and it refocuses him. Here he becomes the artist we know today, making works using Han Dynasty urns, beginning his “Perspective” series, collaborating with other artists to make Black Cover Book despite the risk of censorship from the government. By the 2000s, he is undertaking architecture projects, blogging, becoming a father, and creating documentaries that solidify him as a target of the Chinese government. Eventually he comes to the experience that served as the genesis of this memoir: his imprisonment.
While the previous section about Ai Qing kept a brisker pace, the second half of the book replaces the narrative quality with chronologically sequenced events. Ai punctuates his significant experiences with philosophical statements, like “…I think of art as a beginning: it is when we push ahead, regardless of the consequences, that we give meaning to our lives.” These statements give this section of the book the feeling of an uncle – or “Auntie” as his online followers have called him – imparting wisdom and encouragement to a young relative. Much like listening to an uncle recount his younger years, the last half of the book can lag at times. But the interesting events and insight into art and activism more than make up for it.
By the end, you feel as though you’ve been on a long journey. Indeed 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows feels as monumental, ambitious, and political as some of his most iconic artworks. Ai Weiwei goes beyond his own life to create a family record that cannot be so easily manipulated or erased as his blog posts were. We are left with two strong examples of people who have committed their lives to art and freedom of expression in the face of oppression, something that stands out poignantly in today’s current political climate.
