纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英网飞版三体为何在中国引发愤怒嘲笑和怀疑

The first five minutes of the Netflix series “3 Body Problem” were hard to watch.

网飞版《3体》的前五分钟让人不忍直视。

I tried not to shut my eyes at the coldblooded beating of a physics professor at the height of the Cultural Revolution in 1967. By the end of it, he was dead, with blood and gruesome wounds all over his head and body. His daughter, also a physicist, watched the public execution. She went on to lose hope in humanity.

面对那些画面，我尽量不把眼睛闭上：1967年，在文化大革命的高潮中，一名物理教授遭到残忍的殴打。他被活活打死，遍体鳞伤，身上到处都是血。同为物理学家的女儿眼看着父亲在众目睽睽之下被杀戳，让她对人类失去了希望。

I made myself sit through this violent scene. I have never seen what was known as a struggle session depicted blow-by-blow on the screen. I also felt compelled to watch it because of how the series, a Netflix adaptation of China’s most celebrated works of science fiction, has been received in China.

我强迫自己看完了这个暴力场景。此前，我从未在屏幕上看到“批斗会”被如此活生生地展现出来过。由于这部网飞根据中国最著名的科幻作品改编的剧集在中国引起的反响，我也觉得必须看完这个场景。

On Chinese social media platforms, commenters objected that the series is not set entirely in China; that the main characters are not all Chinese but instead racially diverse; that one of the main characters has been switched from a man to a woman and, in their eyes, the actress was not pretty enough. They cited many other supposed flaws.

在中国的社交媒体平台上，评论者对这部剧集表达了各种不满：情节不都发生在中国；主要人物不都是中国人，而是不同种族的人；原著中的一个男性主角在剧中变成了女性，而且在他们眼里，扮演她的女演员不够漂亮。他们还列举了许多其他在他们看来是错误的东西。

“The Three-Body Problem,” an apocalyptic trilogy about humanity’s reactions to a coming alien invasion that sold millions of copies in Chinese and more than a dozen other languages, is one of the best-known Chinese novels in the world published in the past few decades. Barack Obama is a fan. China doesn’t have many such hugely successful cultural exports.

原著《三体》是一部预示末日的三部曲之一，写的是人类如何应对即将到来的外星人入侵的故事。《三体》的中文版和翻译成十几种语言的其他版本的销量数以百万计，是过去几十年来世界上最著名的中国小说之一。美国前总统奥巴马也是《三体》的粉丝。中国没有几个如此成功的文化输出产品。

Instead of pride and celebration, the Netflix series has been met with anger, sneer and suspicion in China. The reactions show how years of censorship and indoctrination have shaped the public perspectives of China’s relations with the outside world. They don’t take pride where it’s due and take offense too easily. They also take entertainment too seriously and history and politics too lightly. The years of Chinese censorship have also muted the people’s grasp of what happened in the Cultural Revolution.

但网飞版的《3体》并没有在中国引起人们的自豪和庆祝，而是引发了愤怒、嘲笑和怀疑。这些反应表明多年的审查和思想灌输已如何塑造了公众对中国与外部世界关系的看法。该自豪的时候他们无动于衷，而且太容易被冒犯。他们也把娱乐太当真，但对历史和政治却太过漫不经心。多年的审查制度还削弱了人们对“文革”中发生的事情的了解。

Some commenters said that the series got made mainly because Netflix, or rather the West, wanted to demonize China by showing the political violence during the Cultural Revolution, which was one of the darkest periods in the history of the People’s Republic of China.

一些评论者说，制作该剧的主要原因是网飞（或更确切地说是西方）想妖魔化中国，手法之一是展示“文革”期间的政治暴力，那是中华人民共和国历史上最黑暗的时期之一。

“Netflix is just pandering to Western tastes, especially in the opening scene,” said one person on the social media platform Weibo.

“网飞只是在迎合西方口味，尤其是在剧情开场时，”一名用户在微博上写道。

The blockbuster books and their author, Liu Cixin, have a cultlike following in China. That’s not surprising because Chinese society, from senior leadership, scientists, entrepreneurs to people on the street, are steeped in techno utopianism.

这部畅销书及其作者刘慈欣在中国有着狂热的追随者。这并不奇怪，因为中国社会从高层领导、科学家、企业家到街头百姓，都沉浸在技术乌托邦主义中。

The English translation of the first volume was published in the United States in 2014. The same year, the e-commerce giant Alibaba pulled off a blockbuster initial public offering in New York, and the world started viewing China as an emerging tech and manufacturing power instead of just a copycat of Western technologies.

三部曲第一卷的英文译本于2014年在美国出版。中国电子商务巨头阿里巴巴也是那年在纽约完成了轰动一时的首次公开募股。世界开始将中国视为一个新兴的技术和制造大国，而不只是一个模仿西方技术的国家。

The Netflix series portrays China as a scientific giant, speaking to the universe. Mr. Liu’s vast imagination and his probing of the nature of good and evil are key to his books’ success.

网飞版《3体》把中国描绘为能与宇宙交流的科学强国。刘慈欣丰富的想象力以及他对善恶本质的探究是作品成功的关键。

He doesn’t seem to view China or even the Earth as exceptional. In a television interview in 2022, he said that the crises described in any science fiction novel are shared “by humanity as a whole.” He added, “From the perspective of the universe, we are all part of a whole.”

他似乎并不认为中国甚至地球有什么特别。他曾在2022年的一次电视采访中说，任何一部科幻小说里描述的危机都是“人类共同面对的危机”。他还说：“从宇宙的眼光来看，我们就是一个整体。”

The Netflix series adopted a Chinese word “Santi,” or three body, as the alien’s name. The book’s English translation uses “Trisolarian.” When was the last time that a Chinese word made it into the global pop culture? But few people celebrated that on Chinese social media.

网飞在改编中延用了中文音译“三体”作为外星人的名称。而原著《三体》的英文翻译使用的是Trisolarian。上一次中文词进入全球流行文化是什么时候？但中国社交媒体上很少有人庆祝这点。

Instead, many comments zeroed in on how unflatteringly China is portrayed and how few Chinese elements are included in the series. Netflix isn’t available in China but viewers flocked to see pirated versions of “3 Body Problem.”

许多评论反而集中在该剧对中国的描绘多么有损形象、剧中的中国元素多么少等问题上。虽然网飞的服务范围不包括中国，但不少人已看过《3体》的盗版。

The story in the Netflix version takes place mainly in Britain, not Beijing. The actors are racially diverse, including Latino, Black, white, South Asian and Chinese. Some comments call the diverse casting “American-style political correctness,” while others question why the series casts ethnic Chinese only as villains or poor people, which is not true.

网飞版《3体》的故事主要在英国展开，而不是在中国。演员来自不同种族，包括拉丁裔、黑人、白人、南亚人和华人。一些评论称这种多元化的选角是“美国式的政治正确”，还有一些评论对该剧只让华人演员扮演恶棍或穷人（这不是事实）提出了质疑。

If their main complaint about the Netflix adaptation is that the creators took too much liberty with the plot and the main characters, their other major complaint is that the opening scene about the Cultural Revolution is too truthful or too violent.

如果说他们对网飞版《3体》的主要抱怨是创作者对情节和主要角色的改编太随意的话，他们的另一大抱怨则是，该剧开始时的“文革”情景太真实或太暴力。

Some doubted the necessity of mentioning the political event at all. Others accused the show of exaggerating the level of violence in the struggle session.

有些评论者对是否有必要提及该政治事件表示怀疑。还有些评论者指责剧作夸大了“批斗会”的暴力程度。

Scholars believe that 1.5 million to 8 million people died in “abnormal deaths” in the decade from 1966 to 1976, while more than 100 million Chinese were affected by the period’s upheaval.

据不同的学者估计，有150万到800万中国人在1966年到1976年的十年动乱期间“非正常死亡”，逾1亿人受到波及。

Any discussion of the Cultural Revolution, a political movement that Mao Zedong started in 1966 to reassert authority by setting radical youths against those in charge, is heavily censored in China. Mr. Liu, the author, had to move the depiction of the struggle session from the beginning of the first volume to the middle because his editor was worried it couldn’t get past the censors. The English translation opened with the scene, with Mr. Liu’s approval.

文化大革命是毛泽东1966年发动的一场政治运动。他为了重塑自己的权威，号召激进的年轻人与当权派作斗争。国内有关“文革”的讨论都受到严格审查。由于编辑担心小说通不过审查，刘慈欣只好把“批斗会”从第一卷的开头移到了小说的中部。小说英文版以“批斗会”开始，得到了刘慈欣的认可。

“The Cultural Revolution appears because it’s essential to the plot,” Mr. Liu told my colleague Alexandra Alter in 2019. “The protagonist needs to have total despair in humanity.”

“文化大革命在书中出现是因为它对情节至关重要，”刘慈欣曾在2019年对我的同事亚历山德拉·阿尔特说。“主人公需要对人类彻底绝望。”

With the topic increasingly taboo, it’s hard to imagine that Mr. Liu would be able to publish a book with that premise now.

随着中国越来越避讳“文革”的话题，很难想象刘慈欣现在能出版一本以此为前提的书。

In 2007, the independent filmmaker Hu Jie made a documentary about Bian Zhongyun, a vice principal of a middle school in Beijing who was among the first to be beaten to death by the Red Guards. Her husband took photos of her naked, battered body, and Mr. Hu used them at the start of his documentary. The opening scene of “3 Body Problem” reminded me a great deal of it. Mr. Hu’s movie was never publicly screened in China.

2007年，独立电影制片人胡杰拍了一部关于卞仲耘的纪录片。卞仲耘是北京一所中学的副校长，是最早被红卫兵打死的人之一。她的丈夫给她赤裸的、遍体鳞伤的尸体拍了照片，胡杰在纪录片的开头使用了这些照片。《3体》的开头场景让我想起了这部纪录片。这部纪录片从未在中国公开放映过。

Someone on social media recently reposted an old article about Ye Qisong, one of the founders of the study of physics in modern China. In 1967, around the time that the struggle session of the series took place, Mr. Ye, who shared the same family name of the physicist in the opening scene, was detained, beaten and forced to confess crimes he didn’t commit. He went crazy and wandered the streets in Beijing, begging for food and money. The article was circulated widely online before it was censored.

最近有人在社交媒体上转发了一篇关于叶企孙的旧文。叶是中国近代物理学研究的奠基者之一，与《3体》开场“批斗会”上的物理学家同姓。叶企孙在1967年被污蔑为“特务”，遭到关押、殴打，被迫供认所谓的罪行。他曾一度精神错乱，流落在北京街头，向行人乞讨食物和钱。文章在网上广泛流传后遭到了审查。

There’s a cottage industry of making videos on Chinese social media about “The Three Body Problem.” But few dare to address what led the daughter, a physicist, to invite the aliens to invade the Earth. A video with more than 5 million views on the website Baidu referred to the Cultural Revolution as “the red period” without explaining what happened. Another video with more than 8 million views on the video site Bilibili called it “the what you know event.”

在中国的社交媒体上，关于《三体》的视频内容颇为盛行。但很少有人敢在视频中提出，是什么原因导致身为物理学家的女儿请外星人来入侵地球。百度网站上一段播放量超过500万次的视频将文化大革命称为“红色的年代”，但没有解释发生了什么。视频网站哔哩哔哩上另一段点击量超过800万次的视频称文革为“你懂的事件”。

It's not surprising that fans of the book may have heard of the Cultural Revolution, but they don’t have a concrete idea about the atrocities that the Communist Party and some ordinary Chinese committed. That’s why the reactions to the Netflix series are concerning to some Chinese.

这本书的粉丝可能听说过文化大革命，但他们对于中共和一些普通中国人在“文革”期间犯下的暴行没有具体概念，这并不奇怪。这是国内对网飞版《3体》的反应让一些人感到担忧的原因。

A human rights lawyer posted on WeChat that because of his age, he saw some struggle sessions when he was a child. “If I lived a bit longer, I might even get to experience it firsthand,” he wrote. “It’s not called reincarnation. It’s called history.”

一名维权律师在微信上写道，他的年龄足够大，让他在小时候看到过一些批斗会。“如果我活得更久一点，我甚至可能会亲身体验，”他写道。“这不叫转世。这就是历史。”