The following is an excerpt from artist/activist Ai Weiwei’s autobiography, 1,000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (2021).
The environmental change is a sign of moral corruption, like an apple beginning to rot from its core. Our new vocabulary also includes clenbuterol, gutter oil (illegally recycled waste cooking oil), toxic milk, waste materials and carbon emissions. Our mountains are no longer green; our rivers run dry. Air and water pollution are facts that we live with. This autumn China announced a strategic deployment of power outages as a way of curbing shortages and overproduction. These are irregular and intermittent in many provinces and cities, threatening both industrial production and people’s daily lives. Individuals have finally become trapped in a prison of their own making, environmental refugees within their own homes. (October 2021) I fled from the suffocating and life-threatening political environment of Beijing, but leaving was not just an aesthetic and political choice. It was also a longing for fresh air, clean water and green plants, and a desire for freedom and safety. I, too, have become an environmental refugee.