By BO YANQIU
Culture Correspondent
BEIJING (China Daily Show) – Reclusive artist Ai Weiwei has permitted a small team of 46 foreign journalists to interview him, alongside everyone else.
“The other day, I thought: ‘I am going to have breakfast. And what’s so wrong with that? Why shouldn’t the New Yorker do a piece about it?’” the controversial artist mused to several correspondents, while pondering the 88-yuan lunch menu at Helen’s.
“Damned if I’m going to deny the world the details of my morning meal – it was congee, with orange juice,” Ai non-exclusively revealed.
Ai’s breakfast later became one of the New Yorker’s most popular China stories.
The bold meal choice was originally leaked to all 472 Beijing-based foreign reporters via a mass ‘tweet.’
This information was available only to those with a Twitter account, however – which is blocked on the mainland. China’s remaining 600 million web users remain locked in a dark vortex of Ai misinformation and ignorance, experts say.
Mainland opinion polls show that many Chinese believe South Korea is a country and that ‘Mao Zedong’ was just the wrong guy in the right place.
One elderly crone interviewed by China Daily Show had never actually heard of Korean pop single ‘Gangnam Style’ – even more depressingly, she was unable to grasp the potentially-subversive nature of Ai’s cover version, despite the fact that it was released months after the original.
“Please, leave me alone. Where am I?” 62-year-old Am Ding queried, her eyes darting nervously.
Meanwhile, for Chinese citizens craving further knowledge on Ai Weiwei, there is now little option but to read a foreign newspaper.
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