Reflections | How 3 Body Problem recalls one of Chinese history’s worst traitors, who has been vilified for nearly 400 years
- Military leader Wu Sangui (1612-78) is best known for allowing the Manchu army passage through a strategic pass, after which they overran the whole of China
- He has since been despised as a Hanjian, or ‘traitor to the Han people’, and today his name is a byword for a turncoat in Chinese
Last weekend, I watched all eight episodes of 3 Body Problem, a Netflix adaptation of the bestselling Chinese science-fiction novel San Ti (2008), by Liu Cixin.
Ken Liu’s English translation, The Three-Body Problem (2014), was the first novel by an Asian author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel, in 2015, which celebrates the best science fiction and fantasy works.
The main conceit of 3 Body Problem – spoilers ahead! – is the impending arrival of a race of aliens that was contacted by Dr Ye Wenjie, a Chinese scientist who was so utterly disillusioned by the horrors she witnessed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in China that she believed only the aliens could save humanity from itself.
Ye, together with a fanatic cultlike group that she founded, would help the aliens prepare the earth for colonisation.
When the rest of the world finds out, in the present day, what Ye has done, and when it transpires that the aliens, who will reach earth in 400 years’ time, are not so benign (they refer to human as “bugs”), Ye is condemned as a traitor to the human race.
