Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem

Translator’s Note: This meeting marked the beginning of the “Reform and Opening Up” policy and was seen as the moment when Deng Xiaoping became the leader of China.

Translator’s Note: In the later years of the Cultural Revolution, privileged, educated urban youths were sent down to the poor, mountainous countryside to live with and learn from the farmers there. Many of these so-called “Rusticated Youths” were former Red Guards, and some commentators believe that the policy was instituted by Chairman Mao to restore order by removing the rebels, who had gotten out of control, from the cities.

Translator’s Note: The Hundred-Day War at Tsinghua University was one of the most violent Red Guard civil wars during the Cultural Revolution. Fought between two Red Guard factions, it lasted from April 23 to July 27 in 1968. Mêlée weapons, guns, grenades, mines, cannons, etc. were all used. In the end, eighteen people died, more than eleven hundred were wounded, and more than thirty were permanently disabled.

Translator’s Note: Norman Bethune (1890–1939) was a Canadian surgeon who served with the Chinese Communists in their fight against the Japanese invasion force during World War II. As one of the few Westerners who showed friendship to the Chinese Communists, Bethune became a Chinese hero known to the elderly and children alike.

Translator’s Note: There is a pun in Chinese between the word for a proton, zhizi ( ), and the word for a sophon, zhizi ( ).