1000 Years Of Joys And Sorrows - Ai Weiwei/ Japan Invades China 1937

As Russia moves into Ukraine, it seems that Ai Weiwei's description of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 seems an appropriate reading.  Not just for the people of Ukraine, but for the people
of the world.  If Putin is able to 'take' Ukraine, what's next?  And what does this foretell about future relations between Europe, Russia, and the US, not to mention China, and the rest of the world?  

In July 1937.  Ai Weiwei's father Ai Qing was a young poet who had started getting noticed.  Three months earlier, the wife had their first baby on the day the Japanese began their invasion of China.  They are trying to keep ahead of the Japanese army and have arrived at Hangzhou.  Hangzhou is a little west of Shanghai and is known for its beautiful West Lake which is now a World Heritage Site.

Ai Weiwei writes:  

"The West Lake was unchanged, hazy and indistinct.  It seemed to him that the locals were drifting through life, still clinging to an illusory notion of leisure.  The onset of war had failed to shock Hangzhou;  while the fate of the nation hung in the balance, people simply continue with their routines. 'I cannot pretend to love Hangzhou," Father would soon confess.  'Like so many cities in China, it is crammed with narrow-minded, selfish residents,  with complacent and vulgar office workers, low-level officials accustomed to currying favor, and cultural types who make a hobby of hyping things up. They commonly think of themselves as living in unparalleled happiness, as though lounging in their mother's lap.'  He would write these words at the end of the year, when news came to him that Hangzhou had fallen, after he and his family had escaped to Wuhan." (p. 51)

Sound familiar?  

Ai Qing, who had moved his family further west, was once again faced with an advancing army.  This is surely happening right now in parts of Ukraine.

"When they arrived at Jinhua Railway Station at eight o'clock in the morning, wounded soldiers, freshly evacuated from battlefield, lay strewn along the platform.  One of the soldiers, a faint gray light shining in his eyes, told Father that hospitals in the area were no longer taking in casualties.  Some had covered themselves with straw for warmth, while others threw straw in a heap and set fire to it to warm up inside dirty bedrolls.  The fight had disrupted the normal train schedule, and in the confusion it was unclear whether rail service would even continue.  Ticket sales had been halted, and if a train came in everyone simply piled in,whether they had tickets or not."(pp 51-52)

Later, he writes about poetry and democracy.  Ideas to contemplate as those in power aim to abolish truth with mistruths.  

"'Poetry today ought to be a bold experiment in the democratic spirit,' he declared, ' and the future of poetry is inseparable from the future of democratic politics.  A constitution matters even more to poets than to others, because only when the right to expression guaranteed can one give voice to the hopes of people at large, and only then is progress possible.  To suppress the voices of the people is the cruelest form of violence.'  Eighty years later, his faith in poetry's freedom's ambassador has yet to find vindication in China."

For those of you unfamiliar with Ai Weiwei, he's probably modern China's best known artist, though he's living in exile now.  Here's a short bio.

I haven't seen much of Ai Weiwei's art in person.  But I did see this tree at an exhibition of modern Chinese artists at the Louis Vuitton museum in Paris five or six years ago. The link describes it somewhat.  

The Trevor Noah interview below doesn't tell you much about his art or life, but it's worth watching as we deal with an increasingly oppressive takeover of the Republican party.   

I have to add, reading a good book is so much more satisfying that scanning Twitter or other online collections of alarmism and distraction.