Event Description
In 1967, China was in the grip of the Cultural Revolution's most fanatical period. Physicist Ye Zhetai, for insisting on teaching theories labeled "reactionary academics" such as relativity and quantum mechanics, was brutally beaten by Red Guards at a public denunciation rally. His wife Shao Lin was coerced by political pressure into denouncing him, but Ye Zhetai refused to confess. The Red Guards' violence escalated continuously until they killed him on the spot. Young Ye Wenjie stood in the crowd, witnessing the entire process of her father's murder.
This traumatic event profoundly shaped Ye Wenjie's worldview. She witnessed the darkest side of human society — intellectuals persecuted by ignorant mobs, reason replaced by madness, family bonds destroyed by politics. In the years that followed, Ye Wenjie endured further hardships including forced labor in the Inner Mongolian Construction Corps and wrongful imprisonment, each experience deepening her despair toward human civilization. It was this bone-deep despair that later drove her, after being transferred to the Red Coast Base, to make the decision that changed humanity's fate — responding to the Trisolaran signal and inviting them to Earth. The Cultural Revolution was not merely a catastrophe in Chinese history; within the Three-Body narrative, it was the original cause of a universe-scale disaster.