Ai Weiwei
The only surprise to this story is how Ai Weiwei managed to stay not arrested for so long.
So writes Elaine Chow of the Shanghaiist blog (part of the Gothamist network), regarding the news, published by the Chinese dissident artist on his Twitter page, that Chinese police have put him under house arrest. (My above link to Ai’s post is to the site of the tumblr-based English translation of Ai’s Chinese-language Twitter site.)
The audaciously outspoken Beijing-based artist, whose new Shanghai studio is about to be demolished by authorities, is playing a clever but very dangerous game with the authorities. He spoke candidly to several media outlets (the last is Michael Wines’ detailed NY Times report) about his cat-and-mouse negotiations with security officers. According to the above-linked news accounts, the authorities first suggested that Ai not really be under house arrest but only claim to be, as an excuse to his supporters for canceling this Sunday’s planned “crab fest” party at his moribund Shanghai studio.
Would his supporters, not knowing the house arrest was fake, be any less inflamed than by a real one? In any event, Ai says he refused to lie, which got him slapped with the real thing, complete with a “phalanx of Beijing police officers” at his home, according to Wines’ account.
It will be interesting to learn what, if anything, occurs on Sunday at the Shanghai studio, where “eight bands volunteered to play at the event,” as Wines reported.
At least I now know why I wasn’t able to access my Twitter feed during my own visit to China last month, even though Ai manifestly manages to get the word out. According to this account of the Weiwei Fray, Twitter is “a medium banned in China but accessible to the Internet-savvy who can jump over the Great Firewall.”
I’m just not that agile.
UPDATE: A Saturday report on the Weiwei Fray by Christopher Bodeen of the Associated Press, here.
UPDATE 2: The BBC reports that the party took place on Sunday without Ai, “without incident,” but with the crabs.