Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei has spoken about the experience of quietly returning to his homeland for the first time in about a decade, describing it as being like a “phone call that had been disconnected for 10 years suddenly reconnecting”.
The three-week visit in December was Ai’s first since 2015, when Chinese authorities returned his passport. It had been confiscated nearly four years earlier when he was subject to tax evasion charges, which also saw him detained for 81 days.
