The greatest oddity with the street in Beijing where Ai Weiwei lives is how much it now looks like any other street in Beijing.
The menacing car of uniformed public security officers is gone, as is the unmarked car of secret police usually parked a subtle distance away. A CCTV camera still observes the front door of the house, but there is no longer a goon noting down visitors’ number-plates. Unusually, Ai’s interview with The Times is not interrupted after five minutes by a phone call warning him to keep the conversation off politics. The most threatened artist on the planet seems — deceptively — unthreatened.
The veneer of laissez-faire is especially strange because the Chinese authorities know perfectly well that Ai is preparing two