Help me make sense of the artist Ai Wei Wei.

He made the Birds Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing so he'll be brought up forever.

I was introduced to his work as a kid and people seem to always mention him and his work just to say "China bad." Everytime I try to listen to why it just sounds like grey unlistenable sludge. Partially because I don't know much about history in general so I don't know what the mentioned parts of Chinese history are about. My final reason to give up is because I know much/all of what I hear is probably whitewashed propaganda. If he indeed has good criticism, I don't trust Western media to not twist his words out of their original meaning.