I Met Cixin Liu on Three Body day today. New movie is coming

[!NOTE] AN EXCLUSIVE DISPATCH FROM BEIJING (OCTOBER 24, 2026) Every year around October 21–24, Chinese sci-fi fandom congregates for Three-Body Day (三体日). This year marked the landmark 20th Anniversary of the original serialization of Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning masterpiece The Three-Body Problem (三体). Below is our exclusive, on-the-ground report from inside Tank 79 (79罐) in Beijing’s 798 Art District—featuring live on-stage revelations from Cixin Liu and legendary auteur Zhang Yimou.

If you have ever visited Beijing’s 798 Art District, you know its stark industrial bones: soaring Bauhaus-designed electronics workshops built with East German engineering in the 1950s, weathered brick chimneys, and cavernous circular fuel-gas silos.

For the 20th Anniversary Three-Body Carnival (脱水 · 浸泡 / Dehydrate · Rehydrate), the organizers took over Tank 79 (79罐)—a colossal circular iron cylinder that looks like it was plucked straight out of the Crisis Era space fleet docks.

Exclusive photo from Three-Body Day at Tank 79, Beijing: Author Cixin Liu (left) with legendary filmmaker Zhang Yimou (right) discussing the upcoming 2028 feature film.

Attending Three-Body Day is not a simple walk-in affair. Because capacity inside Tank 79 is strictly regulated, ticket reservation opened exactly one week prior through a dedicated WeChat mini-program.

Before you could confirm your booking slot, the system forced you through an interactive philosophical questionnaire:

Your answers determine whether your electronic admission badge brands you as PDC (Planetary Defense Council / 行星防御理事会) or ETO (Earth-Trisolaris Organization / 地球三体组织).

I must confess: spiritually and philosophically, I harbor deep, quiet empathy for Ye Wenjie. Looking at geopolitics, climate crises, and rampant short-termism, it is frighteningly easy to slip into adventist fatalism. But faced with an algorithmic quiz that might determine my event security tier, I swallowed my cynicism, answered like a textbook human loyalist, and got stamped as a proud member of the PDC.

Inside Tank 79: Three incandescent artificial suns suspended from the dome rafters, simulating the chaotic three-sun syzygy (三日凌空).

Once inside our designated time block, we queued up at the entry checkpoint to collect physical Task Cards (任务卡) and an illustrated Survival Field Guide (游玩指南).

Stepping into the main chamber took my breath away. Suspended 30 meters above the floor from the silo’s geodesic iron dome were three colossal, glowing red suns—a physical recreation of the Trisolaran system’s nightmare orbital syzygy (三日凌空). Bathed in crimson light, thousands of fans walked between holographic exhibits, military war rooms, and art installations.

The defining highlight of the day took place on the central stage. Getting into the auditorium and securing access to the autograph hall required a second, fiercely contested reservation.

When the stage lights dimmed and the cosmic synth soundtrack swelled, Cixin Liu (刘慈欣) stepped onto the stage. Dressed in his quintessential black work jacket, frameless glasses, and modest posture, “Da Liu” looked less like a world-famous sci-fi titan and more like the pragmatic thermal power-plant computer engineer he spent decades being in Shanxi.

Then came the earthquake: walking out to join him was Zhang Yimou (张艺谋), wearing his signature white baseball cap, a grey tech-fabric work vest, and an unassuming smile.

Zhang Yimou (right) admiring the autographed collector’s edition of The Three-Body Problem just signed on stage by Cixin Liu (left).

For years, rumors of a Chinese cinematic Three-Body adaptation have lingered in development purgatory. Early attempts in 2015 were shelved due to poor visual effects and fragmented scripts.

On stage at Tank 79, the official reality was laid bare:

For Reddit’s r/threebodyproblem and Western readers, the reaction to Zhang Yimou directing might spark curious questions: Isn’t Zhang an art-house director? Can an 75-year-old maestro handle hard sci-fi quantum physics and relativistic space battles?

To understand why Chinese fans are ecstatic, you have to look at what Zhang Yimou actually represents in visual history:

(Editor’s note: While the stage conversation focused strictly on the upcoming Chinese production, the contrasts between Eastern and Western adaptations were the dominant topic of whispered debates among the fans browsing the convention floor.)

When Netflix released its 8-episode adaptation created by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo in 2024, the reaction in China was complex and intensely debated.

Among Chinese book purists, the consensus remains clear:

This is why having Yang Lei (杨磊) on stage at Tank 79 alongside visual director Lu Beike (陆贝珂) felt so grounding.

Stage panel at Tank 79: Tencent 3-Body TV series director Yang Lei (center) and visual director Lu Beike (right) discussing adapting complex literary sci-fi.

Yang Lei’s 30-episode series proved that audiences do have the patience for 45-minute conversations about cosmic background radiation, cosmic sociological axioms, and scientific despair. With Yang Lei holding down television and Zhang Yimou commanding cinema, fans feel the intellectual integrity of the universe is in the safest hands imaginable.

Beyond the stage announcements, the floor of Tank 79 was a meticulously curated museum of literary artifacts.

Tucked away in the eastern quarter of the silo was a full-scale tactile replica of the 1970s transmission control bunker at Red Coast Base atop Radar Peak.

Tactile historical replica: The classified 1971 Red Coast Base transmission logbook, maintenance notes signed by Ye Wenjie (叶文洁), and retro enamel mug.

Resting on the wooden desk was a vintage enamel tea mug painted with the Red Coast satellite dish, retro logarithmic slide rules, and an open, yellowed maintenance notebook.

Bending down to examine the calligraphy, the logbook read:

Maintenance Task Number: 1971 System Alignment

Antenna System: Minor overheating observed in vacuum seals. Cleared and re-lubricated with high-temperature compound…

Maintenance Lead: 叶文洁 (Ye Wenjie)

Reviewed by: 杨卫宁 (Yang Weining)

Touching the rough paper of that logbook—the exact document where Ye Wenjie secretly pointed the 25-megawatt beam toward the sun and sealed the fate of human civilization—gave every reader in the room chills.

Nearby stood the Sophon Monitoring Room (智子监控终端). Organizers had hooked up a large-language model custom-trained on the novels’ dialogue to an interactive terminal. Fans lined up to type existential questions directly to Trisolaris:

At the merchandise boutique, fan humor shone through with spectacular absurdity. Beside pins stamped with the red seal of Red Coast Base sat retro Beeper Power Banks with glowing LCD screens cycling through the three terrifying characters:

不要回答！不要回答！不要回答！

(Do not answer! Do not answer! Do not answer!)

And hanging proudly in the center display case was the undisputed crowd favorite: Yun Tianming’s Brain Plush Pendant—a soft pink embroidered brain encased in a transparent vacuum container on a key ring, commemorating humanity’s tragic Staircase Project (阶梯计划).

Dark humor at its finest: Official plush pendant of Yun Tianming’s brain preserved in a cryo-jar from the Staircase Project.

If you are a foreign sci-fi fan traveling to China or planning a trip around future Three-Body Day gatherings, here is everything you need to know.

If you have two weeks in China on your 240-Hour Visa-Free Transit or tourist visa, consider this epic literary circuit:

Leaving Tank 79 into the cool Beijing autumn night, I walked past the giant graffiti wall where hundreds of fans had left handwritten notes under the banner “I Am Speaking to Trisolaris.”

One note pinned near the center read simply:

“给岁月以文明，而不是给文明以岁月。”

(Give civilization to years, not years to civilization.)

Watching Cixin Liu and Zhang Yimou stand together on that stage was a reminder of how far this story has traveled. Twenty years ago, it was a serialized story scribbled by an engineer during night shifts in a dusty power plant in Shanxi. Today, it is an undeniable global cultural touchstone—and in the visual hands of Zhang Yimou, the journey of human civilization toward the stars has only just begun.

Curator of China Nomad Guide. Specializing in bespoke route architecture, bilingual on-the-ground fixer services, and neutral medical/dental tourism logistics. Based between Chengdu, Yunnan, and Shanghai.

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