In December 2010 I conducted a 90-minute interview with Wen Tao, as part of my documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. On April 3, just hours after Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport, Wen Tao was taken away by four or five plainclothes officers. Both have not been heard from since, and no charges have been announced.
Ai Weiwei is the most prominent of those recently detained by the Chinese government during the current crackdown (termed by the New Yorker's Evan Osnos "The Big Chill"). Very few people know much about Wen Tao or the other writers, lawyers and activists who have been detained. I edited together this short clip to introduce the world to Wen Tao, to give him a face and a voice.
Wen Tao was not Ai Weiwei's employee. The 38-year-old was an independent journalist. He worked for 11 years as a sports reporter before taking a staff position at the Party-run English newspaper Global Times. He became friends with Weiwei while writing stories about the artist's activities (see some of his articles about Weiwei here and here). These articles eventually cost Wen Tao his job.
Wen Tao was also an avid Twitter user, with the handle @wentommy. He spoke excellent English as well as Mandarin. As you can see from the clip, even as he began to spend more time with Weiwei he clearly saw himself as a journalist. After being fired from his Global Times job he took to documenting Weiwei's work, and added his own analysis and research to the mix.
Those of us who knew Wen Tao in person or online are all very concerned and eagerly anticipate any news of his whereabouts, health and the precise reason for his detainment. Currently two other associates of Ai Weiwei's are also missing. Weiwei's staff have been unable to reach his company's accountant Ms. Hu, and his long-time friend and driver Zhang Jingsong, known to most as "Xiao Pang".
Share this video and don't forget Wen Tao and others, who are detained just like Ai Weiwei.
Follow Alison Klayman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aliklay
http://en.m4.cn/archives/7391.html
Ai WeiWei Con Artist? My guess is someone dropped a dime on him.
BTW: who's "Kathy"? (Yes, I've previously posted under another name, but not "Kathy")
From a 2004 article in the RIBA journal:
“The story with Herzog and de Meuron is twofold. On the one hand, when they were invited to participate in the competition for the stadium, they wanted advisors on several aspects of Chinese culture, to ensure that their design gave out the right messages. ... The match-making was done by Uli Sigg, former Swiss ambassador to China and a keen collector of Chinese contemporary art. H & de M signed up Sigg to be their "expert advisor for logistics and specific Chinese conventions". He knew Ai Weiwei and introduced him to them. Thus the partnership was born. "It's a dialogue that starts early in the design process. That is what the office is interested in," says a practice spokesman. "Living in China, he knows how people respond to certain forms and symbols. His input is important. He is almost part of the team."
http://www.hughpearman.com/articles5/weiwei4.html
Ai Weiwei distances himself from the project. Al Jazeera 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-CdWcszb_8
http://www.freeaiweiwei.org/
Compared with the Earthquake in Indonesia, Haiti and Japan, China's response was a thousand times more effective and transparent. Compared to the disaster in New Orleans, Katrina, and in Burma, again, China's response was exemplary.
For Ai WeiWei to dash ovet to Sichuan, and use this tragedy for his personal agenda is OUTRAGEOUS! Too bad that Wen Dao and others allowed themselves to be caught up in this provocation.
BTW Li Xinggang is the designer of the Bird's Nest Stadium. I am personally discusted at Ai and others that would attempt to rob Li of the credit he so justly deserves!
China has lots of problems, but picking on China's response to the Sichuan quake is in poor taste.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqxyyYSvKhE
China's response to the sichuan quake is now the gold standard. As for buildings that have shoddy construction, that is a world wide problem. Another issue is China is trying to replace shoddy constructed buildings to avoid future deaths, and in Xinjiang, some Uighurs are objecting! Just wait till the big one hits Calif.
It was the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron who invited him to collaborate as "artistic consultant" but Ai withdrew from the project at a relatively early stage and distanced himself quite clearly from it -- though western media still seem keen to hype his involvement, presumably because of his recognisable name.
As for using Sichuan to further his own personal agenda -- are you sure this is not also a media spin? Was he not simply trying to insist on the names of the victims being made public, so that they could be remembered with dignity, as individuals instead of statistics, while also bringing attention to the shoddy construction work that may well have cost them their lives?
What "personal agenda" could that possibly serve? For an artist already internationally renowned, that seems an unlikely motive. If anything, it could damage him or put him in danger.
As for his using the Sichuan earthquake tragedy, I assume you do not know that he made a false claim to the Chinese, that two women, both employed by him, had children who died in the earthquake that were not counted by the Chinese. They took his claim seroiusly, investigated because they didn't want to miss any victims, only to discover that Ai's two women employees had never marraied, never had children, and therefore his claim was bogus, to put it nicely?
Now why do you suppose he put in a false claim?
take care, Kathy
They are not interested in logical debates. Their sole purpose is to manipulate public opinion through shifting focus, smear, and confusion. They are currently executing a well-practiced cyber campaign to discredit and smear state cued target, currently Ai Weiwei. On tweeter, I can see automated tweets from bogus accounts that shoots out a hundred smearing tweets per minute.