the opening scene was shocking, you never see any production studio willing to portray the Chinese regime in a negative light Is Netflix available in China? I don't see how the CCP allows something like this to go unpunished.
I hope it goes completely through the whole series I know they like to string things along I would hate for this to be like 4 seasons or worse. . 1 season then they cancel it Rocket River
"Yesterday, Netflix officially premiered "The Three-Body Problem," a new drama carefully produced by the original team of "Game of Thrones." The drama is adapted from the long science fiction novel "The Three-Body" written by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The opening scene of the first episode describes a scene during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which has caused widespread heated discussions on social media (excluding viewers in China, because the drama has been banned by the Chinese government due to the censorship system). Many people commented that it was too violent and bloody, while others, particularly those who experienced the Cultural Revolution firsthand, argued that due to Netflix's rating system, it was impossible to fully capture the brutal reality of the era on screen. Indeed, my grandfather was one of those cruelty abused and maltreatment to death through struggle sessions. My mother was the daughter forced to witness her father's gruesome death. What was even more horrifying than depicted in the video was the public torture and abuse my grandfather endured day after day, beaten until unconsciousness, only to be dragged away and repeated the next morning. After each session, the Red Guards would force my grandmother, along with my mother and her siblings, to kneel on stage and clean up my grandfather's blood. My mother rarely recalled that period of her life. But one evening on the anniversary of my grandfather's death, when I was 16 years old, after drinking some glasses of wine, she began to recount those cruel memories to me. My mother who always proud and elegant broken down that night as if sulfuric acid had been poured onto a gypsum statue. She cried out like a child, tears streaming down her face, shouting for“Baba(father)”. I held her tightly, fearing she would shatter into sand and I would never be able to put her back together. She completely collapsed in my arms, crying out, "Those demons who killed my father! Not a single one was punished! Those executioners! Never apologized! They live among us, as if nothing ever happened, as if they were human!" That night, she cried herself to sleep in my embrace, while I stayed awake, fearing that the black hole of memory would consume her. Thankfully, the next day, my mother woke up and resumed her usual demeanor. For many years, she never mentioned it again until her passing, and I realized it was the cruelest pain and hatred she could never resolve in her life. Her elegance was her armor, her shield, and her spear. She made those demons see that even though they could destroy lives, they could never destroy spirits. There were things she wouldn't allow them to shatter! While people watch this TV series as entertainment but for me that feels like watching a documentary of my family's history. As I write these words today, my heart still bleeds. I feel I have to record that real history. Because those who lived through it are passing away, yet, the justice has not been arrived!"
Read somewhere that when he wrote the book, his editor made him put all of the Cultural Revolution content in the middle, instead of at the beginning like he wanted, so it would slip by the CCP censors. The english translation has it in the order he originally wanted.
BTW Auggie is Madd Annoying and Saul better become f***ing useful soon otherwise why the hell is he on the Poster? Rocket River
On your spoiler #4, I'll just say this annoyed me a little in the book too. Book has amazing plot and ideas but it's not what I'd call full of character study.
I LOVED the books. This is pretty different from the books (more like just in the same world), and I have zero faith in the GOT creators, so had tempered expectations. But thought the first couple episodes were not bad. Will watch more
fwiw: Tencent already did their Season 1 in China, last year. But that was based on the original Chinese version of the novel, which doesn’t open with the Chinese revolution part of the book. Instead, that part is a back-story found in the middle of the book. I didn’t know Tencent got the rights, too. I guess when Amazon made their $1b offer for exclusive rights, Tencent jumped in with a partial-rights offer, as well as Netflix, resulting in Amazon dropping their exclusive offer.
I don’t think it was put in the middle to “hide” it from censorship, but just to deemphasize it”s role in the book. With how popular the book was in China, it still never got banned. I guess not all writing about the atrocities of that era get banned. I mean, 3 Body Problem puts China in a very prominent role of world influence. I think with that positive portrayal of current and future China, Cixin Lui was awarded some artistic license to have a Cultural Revolution backstory in the book. One thing that made the book so refreshing for me was that it was the first sci-fi novel I’ve read that doesn’t have the US saving the world. lulz
Author Liu said in an interview with the New York Times in 2019 that he had originally wanted to open the book with scenes from Mao's Cultural Revolution, but his Chinese publisher worried they would never make it past government censors and buried them in the middle of the narrative. Any other thoughts?
Well in any event, with the huge popularity in China, it wasn’t going to remain hidden, so the publisher was wrong … it didn’t get censored. Which goes back to my point, that by the time a censor gets to the censorable part, China is already being portrayed very positively, so they let it slide.
The Cultural Revolution was horrific and the dystopian aftermath is still felt in China. It shouldn't be glossed over as something from the past. There are survivors with vivid accounts of families snitching, beating up and publicly humiliating other family members. This happened all over China from cities to the countryside. Chinese people living outside of China probably know more about the truth than people living in the mainland. That's all I got to say about that...