{"id":76740,"date":"2010-06-05T22:46:59","date_gmt":"2010-06-06T05:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/?p=76740"},"modified":"2010-06-05T22:46:59","modified_gmt":"2010-06-06T05:46:59","slug":"is-ai-weiwei-a-patriot-an-answer-from-new-yorker-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinadigitaltimes.net\/2010\/06\/is-ai-weiwei-a-patriot-an-answer-from-new-yorker-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Ai Weiwei a Patriot? An Answer from New Yorker Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On his blog, New Yorker correspondent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/online\/blogs\/evanosnos\/2010\/06\/is-ai-weiwei-a-patriot-an-answer-from-the-new-yorker-archives.html\">Evan Osnos writes <\/a>about a visit poet Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei&#8217;s father, paid to the New Yorker offices in 1981:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIn 1981, Ai Qing was seventy years old, and had been politically rehabilitated for only five years, when he made his first trip to the United States, as part of a small contingent of visiting writers from the People\u2019s Republic, which was still climbing out of the depths of the Cultural Revolution. They visited Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, California, Washington, D.C., and New York, where they paid a visit to the office of The New Yorker. They were received by E. J. Kahn, who wrote for the magazine for fifty-six years.<\/p>\n<p>In the Talk of the Town that week, Kahn described their visit. Ai Qing was the eldest of the group, which also included the novelist Wang Meng and the translator and editor Feng Yidai. Kahn wrote:<\/p>\n<p>    Ai Qing, every inch the Oriental elder, was wearing Chinese cloth shoes and a Chinese suit. We asked the poet what the acceptable term was these days, with the Gang of Four on trial, for a jacket like his\u2014what we Americans had got used to calling a Mao jacket. All smiles vanished. \u201cThis was never a Mao jacket,\u201d Ai Qing said after a reflective pause. \u201cI am wearing what has always been a Dr. Sun Yat-sen jacket.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>In the years since his death, Ai Qing\u2019s torment has become a symbol in China for the price of honesty. I often hear Chinese people wonder if Ai Weiwei has been afforded some modest latitude to agitate because some in the leadership still can\u2019t entirely bear to acknowledge the mistreatment of his father.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The full New Yorker piece about Ai&#8217;s visit can be downloaded <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/cBuYEO\">here<\/a> (PDF).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On his blog, New Yorker correspondent Evan Osnos writes about a visit poet Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei&#8217;s father, paid to the New Yorker offices in 1981: In 1981, Ai Qing was seventy years old, and had been politically rehabilitated for only five years, when he made his first trip to the United States, as part [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,20,100],"tags":[11247,5870,3640],"class_list":["post-76740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","category-culture","category-politics","tag-ai-qing","tag-ai-weiwei","tag-prc-history","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.9 (Yoast SEO v23.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is Ai Weiwei a Patriot? 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