For five years, between the ages of 10 and 15, Ai Weiwei lived in Xinjiang with his father in a rudimentary shelter dug out of the earth. There, he was made to clean the latrines. The idea for the book came to him when he was taken into police custody in isolation, he found himself reflecting on the experiences of his own father, the renowned poet Ai Qing, who, during the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966, was branded an “anti-Rightist” and banished to a re-education camp in Xinjiang known as Little Siberia. He was kept in solitary confinement in a tiny cell for 81 days before being released without charge.Īi recounts, in jaw-dropping detail, the episode for which he is most famous in his new memoir, 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows. His is a face instantly recognisable from the posters and artworks that appeared in streets and museums around the world when, in 2011, the artist and outspoken critic of the Chinese government was detained at Beijing airport for unspecified “economic crimes”.

Sitting across from me in a corner table of a London hotel restaurant, with his grey-flecked beard and somewhat crumpled navy shirt, Ai Weiwei’s appearance is both unassuming and iconic.

How to draw postman