An interview with Ai Xiaoming

Ai Xiaoming, 2016 

Ai Xiaoming is one of China’s leading documentary filmmakers and political activists. Since 2004, she has made more than two dozen films, many of them long, gritty documentaries that detail citizen activism or uncover whitewashed historical events. Among them are Taishi Village, which recounts the efforts of farmers to remove a corrupt party secretary; The Epic of the Central Plains, which tells the story of an AIDS village in Henan province; a five-part series on the 2008 Beichuan Earthquake that focuses on the efforts of activist Tan Zuoren; and, most recently, a five-part documentary on Jiabiangou—a labor camp for political prisoners where thousands died of famine in the Great Leap Forward. Still in progress, it already totals seven hours.

The sixty-two-year-old grew up in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, daughter of Ai Renkuan, the adopted son of the Tang Shengzhi. In 1985 she moved to the capital to teach at Beijing Normal University, where she befriended many leading thinkers in China’s post-Cultural Revolution intellectual scene. In 1994, she became a professor of Chinese literature at Sun Yat-sen University in the southern city of Guangzhou, where she taught women’s studies and literature before retiring two years ago. She is the author of eight books on literature, and has translated works by Kundera.

Read the full interview with Ian Johnson here.

SOURCE: NYBOOKS