Previous
Commissar Lei
Once a student of Ye Zhetai’s, Yang Weining has always successfully avoided getting in any political trouble. As a leader at the Red Coast Base, Yang Weining pushes to reveal the base’s true purpose (the search for extraterrestrial life) to Ye Wenjie. Eventually, close collaboration with Ye causes Yang to fall in love with her, and their marriage soon leads to the birth of a daughter, Yang Dong. Unfortunately, however, Yang’s romantic feelings were never reciprocated, as Ye felt that their marriage was “the loneliest time” of her life. Ultimately, Ye murders Yang along with Lei in an attempt to keep communicating with the Trisolarans.
Yang Weining Quotes in The Three-Body Problem
The The Three-Body Problem quotes below are all either spoken by Yang Weining or refer to Yang Weining . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 8 Quotes
Her father left behind some records. She listened to all of them and finally picked something by Bach as her favorite, listening to it over and over. That was the kind of music that shouldn't have mesmerized a kid. At first, I thought she picked it on a whim, but when I asked her how she felt about the music, she said she could see in the music a giant building, a large, complex house. Bit by bit, the giant added to the structure, and when the music was over, the house was done […] I failed. Her world was too simple, and all she had were ethereal theories. When they collapsed, she had nothing to lean on to keep on living.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes
“You want to aim a super powerful radio beam at the red sun. Have you thought about the political symbolism of such an experiment?”
Yang and Ye were both utterly stunned, but they did not think Lei’s objection ridiculous. Just the opposite: they were horrified that they themselves had not thought of it. During those years, finding political symbolism in everything had reached absurd levels. The research reports you turned in had to be carefully reviewed by Lei so that even technical terms related to the sun could be repeatedly revised to remove political risk. Terms like “sunspots” were forbidden.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Three-Body Problem LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Yang Weining Character Timeline in The Three-Body Problem
The timeline below shows where the character Yang Weining appears in The Three-Body Problem. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3. Red Coast I
...introduce themselves as Lei Zhicheng, who is the Political Commissar at Red Coast Base, and Yang Weining , who is the chief engineer there. Ye is shocked to see Yang—he was one...
(full context)
Chapter 12. Red Coast II
During this time, Yang Weining —who was politically suspect because of his past in academia—often took out his frustration on...
(full context)
...of Red Coast”—to pay close attention to any communication in space between enemy vessels. Again, Yang Weining threatened to report Lei for sharing this information with Ye.
(full context)
...about Red Coast’s activities. For example, though they intercepted transmission from a threatening American satellite, Yang Weining showed no interest; instead, he redirected Ye and her colleagues to focus their signal monitoring...
(full context)
...writing Bai’s letter. Now, though, the officers were not angry. Instead, Commissar Lei explained that Yang Weining had long been petitioning to reveal the truth behind Red Coast Base to Ye—finally, they...
(full context)
...fact that she had been lied to, all the other officers exited, leaving Ye and Yang Weining alone together. Yang Weining offered Ye one final chance to refuse the knowledge about what...
(full context)
Chapter 14. Red Coast IV
...projects under the leadership of Commissar Lei. It was during this time that Ye married Yang Weining . Eventually, though, an accident on the base killed both Lei and Yang Weining; shortly...
(full context)
Chapter 25. The Deaths of Lei Zhicheng and Yang Weining
...21, 1979; she explains that she was motivated to kill Commissar Lei and her husband Yang Weining upon realizing that Lei, too, had gotten the message from the Trisolarans.
(full context)
Chapter 35. The Ruins
Ye walks to the edge of the cliff, remembering when she killed her husband— Yang Weining —and Commissar Lei in this very spot. As she stares out at the surrounding countryside,...
(full context)
