BEIJING — Ai Weiwei, China's most famous living artist, lives and works in Caochangdi, which used to be a village to the east of Beijing but is now, thanks to the city's endless creep — locals call it Beijing Tan Da Bing, or spreading pancake — just another crowded suburb. It takes a long time to get anywhere in Beijing, and in our taxi, April, my translator, is getting more and more excited. "He's like the king," she says (she has met him before). "And we will be like . . . the servants. The people who work for him, they're like his servants, too. If he doesn't want a drink, no one gets one." She smiles. Being received by Ai, you understand, is an honor, no matter how gnomic his pronouncements, nor how desperate you might be for a cup of tea.
In the West, Ai's name was once known only in art circles. After his collaboration with the architects Herzog & de Meuron on Beijing's Olympic stadium — it was his idea to make it look like a bird's nest — his fame spread, especially when he gave an interview in which he announced that he had "no interest" in the Olympics or in the Chinese state's propaganda — and that, no, he would not be attending the opening ceremony.
Even so, it remains hard to convey the extent of his fame in China. The New York Times has described Ai as a "figure of Warholian celebrity" in Beijing, but I'm not sure even this does him justice. Warhol did a few screen prints and hung out in a night club with other famous people, in a country where he was free to do pretty much as he liked. Ai is not only an artist but also an influential architect, a publisher, a restaurateur, a patron and mentor, and an obsessive blogger (he is read by 10,000 people every day).