Ai Weiwei: ‘I am like a cat. Cats can play for a whole day’

As his new show opens in Cambridge, the artist reflects on his interest in fakes, why he’d love to go home, and the fate of the Chinese tennis star Peng ShuaiAi Weiwei, 64, must qualify by now as a grand old man of contemporary art except that as a sculptor, photographer and documentary film-maker, he is characterised by unflagging energy and youthful playfulness. As a child, he lived in a dugout in China’s “Little Siberia” where his poet father, Ai Qing, had been banishe