Background
After Ye Wenjie's father, Ye Zhetai, was beaten to death by Red Guards during a Cultural Revolution denunciation rally, Ye Wenjie's life plunged into an abyss. Her mother Shao Lin severed ties with her under political pressure, and she was stripped of the right to continue academic research at Tsinghua University. She was subsequently sent to the Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps for labor reform. During her time in the Corps, Ye Wenjie witnessed the devastating large-scale deforestation of the Greater Khingan Mountains' primeval forests, with the ecological environment suffering catastrophic destruction. She read American marine biologist Rachel Carson's work "Silent Spring," a book about environmental protection that was considered reactionary material in the political climate of the time. More unfortunately, journalist Bai Mulin, after using Ye Wenjie to help him compile related materials, shifted all responsibility onto her to protect himself, subjecting her to even more severe political accusations.
It was precisely at Ye Wenjie's most desperate moment that Yang Weining, the director of the Red Coast Base, and Political Commissar Lei Zhicheng took notice of her. The Red Coast Base was conducting a top-secret scientific research project that required researchers with expertise in astrophysics. Ye Wenjie had graduated from Tsinghua University's Physics Department, studied under her father Ye Zhetai, and possessed a solid foundation in theoretical physics and astrophysics. Despite her serious political problems, the base's remote geographic location and strict security classification during that special era actually made it possible to recruit someone with political issues — because once inside the base, contact with the outside world was virtually impossible.
The True Nature of Red Coast Base
The Red Coast Base was situated on Qijiatun Peak in the Greater Khingan Mountains, a large-scale radio astronomy facility secretly constructed by China during the Cold War. At the base's core was an enormous parabolic antenna, tens of meters in diameter, mounted on a rotating platform atop the mountain peak. The base disguised itself as a military radar station, while actually carrying out two secret missions: monitoring potential signals from outer space (SETI-type searches) and transmitting high-powered electromagnetic signals into outer space to attempt contact with possible extraterrestrial civilizations.
Daily operations at the base were strictly classified, and all personnel were confined to the base grounds. Ye Wenjie was initially assigned basic data processing and computation work, her political status preventing access to core secrets. However, Ye Wenjie's outstanding academic abilities quickly caught the attention of base director Yang Weining. Yang Weining was himself an excellent scientist who gradually realized that Ye Wenjie's talent was crucial for solving the technical challenges the base faced.
Through her work at Red Coast Base, Ye Wenjie gained access to extensive materials on radio astronomy and electromagnetic wave propagation. Her research perspective expanded from pure theoretical physics into the domain of cosmic communication. For years, the base had been attempting to transmit sufficiently powerful signals into outer space, but limited by transmission power, the signals were insignificant on a cosmic scale. This technical bottleneck frustrated all researchers, and it was in the process of attempting to solve this problem that Ye Wenjie made the most important scientific discovery of her life.
Discovery of the Solar Amplification Effect
While studying solar radio data, Ye Wenjie noticed anomalous signal fluctuations. After repeated verification and theoretical derivation, she proposed a revolutionary hypothesis: the sun could function as a cosmic-scale electromagnetic wave amplifier. Specifically, when electromagnetic waves of certain frequencies were directed at the sun's surface, its energy layers could amplify the signal power billions of times over, then retransmit it omnidirectionally into space. This discovery meant that humanity actually possessed the capability to transmit information across the entire Milky Way and beyond — all that was needed was to aim existing transmission equipment at the sun.
This discovery was scientifically revolutionary, but Ye Wenjie did not initially make it public. She understood its enormous significance — it represented not merely a technological breakthrough but meant that humanity for the first time truly possessed the means to communicate with potential extraterrestrial civilizations. Deep within, Ye Wenjie had begun contemplating a larger question: if extraterrestrial civilizations truly existed, should humanity actively seek contact? Everything she had experienced during the Cultural Revolution — her father's brutal death, the ugliness of human nature, the collapse of reason — had planted fundamental doubt about human civilization. It was in the isolated environment of Red Coast Base that Ye Wenjie's thinking underwent a prolonged and painful transformation, ultimately arriving at total despair toward human civilization.
A Turning Point of Fate
Red Coast Base was not only a turning point in Ye Wenjie's scientific career but also in her personal destiny. She later married base director Yang Weining, a marriage born more of mutual dependence in that special environment than genuine love. Although Yang Weining respected Ye Wenjie academically, he remained politically vigilant toward her. Political Commissar Lei Zhicheng continuously attempted to exploit Ye Wenjie's scientific talent for his own political advancement. Ye Wenjie's circumstances at Red Coast Base seemed considerably better than at the Construction Corps, yet she remained bound by various political shackles, unable to truly live and research freely.
Red Coast Base ultimately became the watershed moment of human destiny. It was here that Ye Wenjie completed the discovery of the solar amplification effect, here that she secretly transmitted the signal that changed everything into the universe, here that she received the Trisolaran world's "Do not answer" warning, and here that she disregarded the warning to transmit her reply. From the moment Ye Wenjie set foot in Red Coast Base, the trajectory of human civilization's fate began its irreversible deviation. This military facility deep in the mountains held significance in human history far exceeding any nuclear weapons factory or space launch center.