Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/14/how-censorship-soured-chinese-pride-over-hit-sci-fi-adaptation-of-3-body-problem.html
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NYT wouldn’t let me read the op-ed, so I don’t know if it’s mentioned, but there was already a Chinese TV series of the book that was extremely faithful and didn’t make most of the characters Western
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How exactly does one get a job at the”paper of record” copy/pasting social media posts? Seems like a good gig.
The only criticism I’d heard of Liu before this was his supposedly close alliance with the CCP. And isn’t weibo very much controlled by the CCP? That makes me think that the outrage would skew heavily toward criticism of the cultural revolution and overt western erasure of Chinese characters and culture.
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Novel =/= Adaptation
It is such a great honor to have a western production company hire western directors and mostly western actors to adapt one of the great Chinese science fiction works of the 20th century into a series. What? They don’t like it? It must be all that propaganda and closed media environment, then. What other explanation could there be?
When Netflix adapted the Indian novel Sacred Games, they had an Indian production company make the series with Indian actors and they did it in Hindi. It’s a great show not in spite of how Indian it is, but because of it.
I don’t see why they couldn’t have done something similar for 3 Body Problem.
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No need, Chinese producers had already done it.
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Ms. Yuan is a graduate of Columbia University and George Washington University. She grew up in China’s northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. She worked for the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing, Bangkok and Kabul, Afghanistan, as an editor and a foreign correspondent.
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Looking at the timeline, it seems like the productions were practically concurrent. But in any case, it’s not hard to see why the Chinese would prefer the Chinese version.
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FWIW: I have read the first book in the series, and I enjoyed listening to an IMHO excellent audio adaptation of the whole series (provided for free by German public radio, it’s still available online. A fascinating story told by a Chinese author, from a Chinese perspective, mostly set in China, and with mostly Chinese protagonists.
After a colleague recommended the Netflix adaptation to me last week, I checked it out, but I could not even make it through the first episode. I had expected to see China, and Chines actors, instead I saw London, and a rather diverse cast. That was definitely not what I came for.
Exactly. The Wikipedia article about the series explains about the response in China:
Viewers criticised the racebending and gender swapping of several protagonists, cultural appropriation, as well as the “dumbing-down” of concepts to appeal to non-Chinese audiences, and compared it unfavorably to the 2023 Chinese television adaptation, which received much critical acclaim there.
I can’t talk about the dumbing-down, because I didn’t stay long enough to experience that, but I’ll definitely check out the Chinese series once I found a way to stream outside the US without giving money to Bezos.
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I think we really fail to see how much they are totally cut off, not just from Western thought but even from their own history.
I mean - you could say that about a lot US history, where we were/are taught more of a mythology than history in school (like George Washington and the cherry tree.) Most peoples’ understanding of US history is very whitewashed and cherry picking the good parts.
Viewers criticised the racebending and gender swapping of several protagonists, cultural appropriation, as well as the “dumbing-down” of concepts to appeal to non-Chinese audiences,
That’s kinda funny because that criticism is echoed in A LOT of media where people lose their minds if a white character is now black, or a male character played by a woman. Same with clunky cultural representations.
It’s not unique to imported media adapted, and more of a broader problem of media.
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It’s not like Americans get super excited whenever people on the other side of the world make their own screen adaptations of our popular literature.
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Some of it can be fun! I guess the Japanese Spider-man was what Power Rangers and similar shows were derivative of with the giant robot that showed up in the show! And American Kids ate up Power Rangers!
I also find it neat that the US with Marvel/Hasbro took unrelated toy lines from Japan, gave them names and backstories and an over arching plot. Which was later made in Japan under a different canon, which in turn would influence US media. Lots of back and forth. And we can’t get cool Jetfires, because the design was a licensed Robotech design! 
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Damn is this another reason for me to hate Harmony Gold?
Macross and Transformers references are at least partly related to cross-cultural adaptations 
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Hasbro/Takara are in the clear to do toys of Jetfire, just they can’t hew too close to the licensed VF-1S design. Harmony Gold even tried to sue Hasbro when they released a GI Joe Skystriker in Jetfire colours with a back attachment that resembled the module on the top of Skyfire’s animation design. Hasbro won the suit with prejudice
There’s been a couple of very nice Jetfire toys in recent years, most notably this one that came out as part of the mass retail Generations line:
(the decepticon logo on his chest can flip to an autobot one)
And this one in the adult-oriented Masterpiece line:
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The earlier 2023 adaptation from the Chinese streaming service Tencent, however, is an almost page-for-page literal adaptation of the English-language version of the novel in every respect except this one. Instead of showing the public execution of Wenjie’s dad, in the Tencent version, he’s arrested and betrayed by members of his own family, and he still loses his esteemed career as a physicist — but he’s ultimately never executed, and it’s implied instead that he died in ignominy with only Ye Wenjie at his side. This is a stark change that arguably waters down the impact of the book, but we still fully understand that the Cultural Revolution victimized Ye Wenjie and her father; decades later, when other characters learn what she went through, they’re appalled. Both the Tencent and Netflix versions faithfully adapt Ye Wenjie’s later harsh life in the labor camp and the subsequent betrayals she experiences.
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Yet this performed patriotism in no way means that Chinese citizens are unaware of the darker parts of their history; witness one Weibo user who described being stunned and impressed by the opening of the Netflix series, with its historically accurate, unflinching depiction of the Cultural Revolution. Such reactions undercut US-centric media’s tendency to pigeonhole Chinese citizens as brainwashed or unquestioning of CCP dogma.
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Huh, Chinese audiences expect media to be centered around them, take offense at entertainment that challenges them in any way, get upset when the race/gender of a character is changed from the “default” in an adaptation, and have no sense of history? Who do they think they are? Americans?
Arguably not just a lot, but all of US history. My experience is that educated non-Americans have a better notion of US history (and certainly when it comes to events involving other countries) than educated Americans do. The kind of cultural censorship that occurs to keep those myths alive is the envy of authoritarian regimes.
Yeah, weird that they wouldn’t want to aim their production at an audience that was only going to see the program through pirated copies. (Netflix is available in India, it is banned in China. A production done in India is primarily aimed at India and secondarily aimed at the global market, this was primarily aimed at the US and secondarily at the global market; China wasn’t even part of the equation.)
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Of course those us of a certain age, ate up Speed Racer and Ultraman.
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As long as the decision to betray humanity is adequately justified.
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