Ai Weiwei: Imprisoned for art

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 June 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2008, an earthquake in China’s Sichuan province killed almost 90,000 people. Many were crushed when school buildings collapsed, exposing their poor construction quality.

To counter perceived government suppression of information, the artist Ai Weiwei made an artwork from 90 tonnes of steel bars salvaged from the schools' wreckage.

In 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained in harsh conditions for 81 days and banned from leaving China. While his official charge was tax evasion, his detention was widely viewed as a response to his activism. But the artwork, Straight, became a global sensation. Ai Weiwei tells the story to Ben Henderson.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: Ai Weiwei in front of his artwork, Straight. Credit: Leon Neal/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, podcast fan. Consider this your invite to the UK's biggest podcasting party. We're heading to Sheffield from the 4th to the 6th of July for the BBC Sounds Fringe at the Crosswires Festival. We'll be joined by some of the biggest names in podcasting, including Sarah Cox, Charlie Hedges, Russell Kane, and some bloke called Greg James doing his Radio 4 show called Rewinder.
0:23.0	You can watch live shows of your favourite podcasts, and the best part is free.
0:28.0	To book your free tickets, go to crossedwires.orgive, forward slash fringe.
0:36.6	Hello and welcome to Witness History from the BBC World Service with me, Ben Henderson.
0:42.2	We're the daily podcast that takes you back to the biggest moments in history, told by the people who are there.
0:48.0	Please desubscribe so you never miss an episode.
0:52.6	Today, we're going back to May 2008, when an earthquake in China's Sichuan province killed almost 90,000 people.
1:01.0	After visiting the devastation, China's most famous artist, I Wei Wei, was inspired to make an artwork,
1:09.0	which set him on a collision course with China's government.
1:11.6	The wind blows. You can sense the death is in the wind.
1:16.6	Then you can see the Chinese flag is blowing in the wind.
1:23.6	The rest all disappeared.
1:25.6	The only thing you see on the ground is the students' backpacks
1:32.2	and the school materials, pencil, textbook, and all those.
1:40.0	That made a devastating image in my mind.
1:45.0	For China, 1966 has been the most dramatic year, the year of greatest political upheaval
1:52.0	since Mao Zedong came to power 17 years ago. Red guards on the rampage, a widespread
1:58.0	purge throughout the Chinese Communist Party, All this in the name of Cultural Revolution.
2:03.6	Ai Wei Wei's father was a celebrated poet who fell out of favor in the 1950s under Chairman Mao's rule.
2:10.6	The family was sent to a so-called re-education camp where Ai Wei Wei grew up.
2:15.6	There's no electricity, no water.
2:19.1	It's the worst condition human can ever survive.
	...

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