1958

The Chinese Communist Party brands Ai Qing, Ai Weiwei’s father, a “triple criminal” against the party, the state and the country. His family is exiled to Beidahuang, in Heilongjiang Province on the country’s northeast border. Ai Qing and his family are moved to a military re-education camp in Shihezi, in Xinjiang Province in northwest China. They are later moved to an even more isolated village and live in an underground room in the Gobi Desert for five years. Ai Qing is sentenced to hard labour and tasked with cleaning the town’s latrines. They are allowed back to Shihezi in 1972.