China's most famous artist, Ai Weiwei, was arrested and detained for 81 days. When he was released from jail, he refused to talk to journalists. In fact, he refused all interviews about his experience inside, until he was approached by Barnaby Martin, who wrote, not an article, but a book, Hanging Man, named for one of Weiwei's most famous pieces of art.
Here, at the end of the book, he talks about the humanity of his jailers and how they were victims themselves, trapped in a system they no longer believed in.
It was a chastening realisation.
And so, the book ends on a note of hope.
"By the way," I say, "last night in the youth hostel, I went through all we said yesterday and I kept thinking that it would make a great play one day."
"Yes," says Weiwei. "When I was in there, I sometimes thought that too. The whole situation was so dramatic, it was so full of paradoxes. I was a prisoner of course but so were the guards who had to stand by me day and night, and so were the people watching me from outside, trying to figure out what to do with me. Everyone was stuck. It was a very dramatic situation. And we talked so much about the meaning of art, about politics, about freedom and all the time I tried to answer their questions but at the same time I had to be on my guard because you always have to be very cautious and very careful because you don't know what's really going on. You only know that you are in absolute danger but at the same time you are desperate to limit the danger and even though you are in absolute danger and cut off from reality, you must still make sure that you don't hurt somebody on the outside or make the problem even bigger by saying the wrong thing. And there was so much confrontation, so much hostility, and the interrogators were not allowed to get to know me or even to say anything that would make me a person. I was just a number. Number 1135. That's my room number. But even this becomes completely dramatic and surreal because the soldiers who are guarding me are young and they have their own past, their own lives, and nobody cares about them at all. They are just soldier A or B or C or D. So confusing. The situation really examines the very essential questions, the very philosophical questions. How this esoteric society maintains itself and how it will now work and what happens to human nature in those circumstances. It's significant that sooner or later all the soldiers, except one -- their leader didn't talk to me -- but all of the others all secretly talk to me. But though they all secretly talked to me none of them know that the other ones were also secretly talking to me because of course it's not allowed. They were so bored, wanting to pass the time somehow. They said, "Weiwei, can you tell us a joke?? This was such a crazy situation. How can I tell them a joke? I am in jail; I have no idea what is about to happen to me -- I might end up in jail for twenty years. I said, "I'm very sorry. If I had known that I was going to be arrested I would have memorised two hundred jokes!"
"Time passes so slowly, for you and for them, and you try to memorise everything that happened in your life but after twenty days you have nothing left, it's completely empty! You have remembered every detail, no one has more than that. I remembered every person, every occasion, every meeting, every conversation, from when you are very young right up to that day and then suddenly you are completely empty. It's crazy. Then I try to hold on to something, to think about my son, my wife, my mum. Just to hold on. But then that becomes so painful to think about because they are just as completely innocent as you are and it is unbearable and the outside world also seems like a jail because you can never really communicate to them. So then every time I think of them there were tears pouring down my face and the soldiers say, "Are you thinking about your wife, your son again? Don't do that. You have to forget about this. You have to forget it all." So I think I really do have to forget about this otherwise I cannot go on. It's so painful, thinking ten years in jail...You know, it's just like that...So many conflicts about reality, imagination, crime. The whole thing is a paradox. And it continues, even when you leave. It has infected your outside reality. So two of the soldiers were meant to go home by this 25 December. I gave them my number. They already called me.
"No. Really?"
"Yes. They said, "Are you out?" Because they don't know -- they don't have any news in the army. One day they are moved to guard another room and they would never know then what happened in this room. They said, 'We were so worried about you, we kept thinking about you, we are so happy you are out...' It was so shocking. And after my release, the interrogator sometimes comes to see me. It's very strange. I said to him, 'Why do you do this, you shouldn't monitor me now.'"
"But he is coming to check up on you?"
"Yes. And he says, 'Weiwei, just let this one year pass. Come on! You will not die if you don't say a word for one year. Let it pass, then everything will be fine.' And I wonder if that's how this nation will change because now there are a lot of individuals who have their own sensibilities and they have their own judgement. Even after all the kingdoms and dynasties of China, this has never happened before. But now people are beginning to have their own judgement, their own opinion."
"So this is partly to do with the passage of time. Twenty years ago the individual in those roles would still have had a belief in the ideology. Why is it that nowadays these relatively senior people, even if they are not actually in a revolution, they personally, don't want to tarnish their integrity? What is it that's changed?"
"I think that the only reason for the change is because there is so much more information. So much information happens every day and even with such censorship people can still receive a lot of news from the world. Basically I believe a person is a container of all this information, knowledge, judgements. The state of course is still so strong but the Party cannot limit the information any more. There are too many ways round. And with this information people start to form their own view of the world."....
"But you know, from the very first second I realise even here there is humanity. Even when they put the black hood on me, when the two soldiers were holding me, one soldier grabbed me very tight but the other just pretended to grab me but in fact he held me very loose. So even sitting there, they try to give me more space, not to really hurt me..."
"Really?"
"Yes! So then you realise that there are two people sitting here, two other human beings. One obeys the command, the other just tries to use his own judgement and thinks, 'I don't see why we have to do this.' And that small thing, that tiny sense of humanity, certainly made me much more comfortable in this one-hour road to that secret place. And every time, when they put a handcuff on me, some of them just did it so carefully, first one tooth, then two teeth, so it's very loose, still comfortable. So loose in fact that you even can take your hand out. And somebody would even very carefully put my shirtsleeve under the handcuff so that the metal would not directly touch my skin. They didn't have to do all those things. It's just a job, why should they care? I didn't even care. But they carefully did that. It shows a lot of humanity, it shows they're different. It shows they think and they decide that they don't believe in this. And some police would always say,"Do you want tea?" They would keep asking. I don't want tea at the start but they keep pouring tea, trying to make me feel good. There was a lot of nice or warm situations there. A lot of humanity."
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