Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei regained his passport on Wednesday afternoon, more than four years after it was seized by authorities apparently in retaliation for his social and political activism.
Ai posted a selfie to Instagram at about 3 p.m., holding his red People’s Republic of China passport up to the camera. “Today, I picked up my passport,” he wrote in a caption. The post has received more than 1,200 “likes” and nearly 200 comments, most of them supportive, as of press time.
Andreas Johnsen, director of the 2013 documentary “Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case,” said the news was a shock -- but a pleasant one.