Double crossing
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.
The main conceit of the show – spoiler alert! – is the impending arrival of a race of aliens that was contacted by Dr Ye Wenjie, a scientist who was so disillusioned by the horrors of the Cultural Revolution that she believed only the aliens could save humanity from itself.
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 humans as
“bugs”), Ye is condemned as a traitor to the human race.
Among the many traitors in
China’s past, Wu Sangui (1612-1678) is best known for allowing the Manchu army to pass through Shanhaiguan, a narrow, strategic pass about 400km from Beijing. The Manchu troops quickly overran all of China and established themselves as rulers under the new Qing dynasty.
While they’re now regarded as a part of the Chinese nation, the Manchu were considered foreigners, even barbarians, by the Han Chinese 400 years ago. For his actions, Wu has been despised as a Hanjian, or “traitor to the Han people”.
As a reward for his help, Wu was made a prince and conferred a vast region in China’s southwest, where he ruled as an autonomous potentate. As a subject of the new regime, Wu persecuted loyalists of the fallen Ming dynasty, and even executed Yongli, the last pretender to the Ming throne.
In time, the central government reduced the powers of these regional princes, who responded by rebelling. As a final hurrah, Wu declared himself emperor of the Wu-Zhou dynasty in
1678, but died seven months later of natural causes. Soon afterwards, the Qing government repossessed his princedom.
Wu is still vilified. His very name is a byword for a turncoat in Chinese.
But what about the many other Han officials, soldiers and functionaries who served the Manchu before and after their occupation of China? If these individuals were all Hanjian, what about the countless Chinese people who served in the British colonial government in Hong Kong? Surely, they couldn’t all be “traitors to the Chinese race”? Or were they?