Remembrance of Earth's Past

Cheng Xin first spoke to Tianming at a college outing at Miyun Reservoir and folded an origami boat; he thinks of her more and more.

Ye Zhetai's daughter; held back by janitors from rushing onstage, she watched her father die and then placed his pipe in his hand.

Luo Ji was Yang Dong's high school classmate, formerly studied astronomy and now teaches college sociology at the school where Ye Wenjie taught.

Tianming is a terminally ill lung cancer patient whose cancer has spread throughout his body; chemo and radiation can only prolong his life.

AA is an astronomy Ph.D. who discovered DX3906's planets using one star as a gravitational lens; she became Cheng Xin's liaison, then resigned to run her company.

Wang Miao is a nanomaterials researcher and amateur landscape photographer who dislikes rude people and had been admiring Yang Dong since seeing her a year earlier.

Wade, an American, is the young, handsome, expressionless PIA chief; his office has a cold painting of early eighteenth-century New York and a bloodstained wreath picture.

Shi Qiang is a crude, chain-smoking police captain with a bad record, but he is very observant and was requested by General Chang.

Ding Yi is a theoretical physicist famous for discovering the macroatom while studying ball lightning, and was Yang Dong's boyfriend.

Yang Dong was a young theoretical physicist whose superstring model was to be the first test at the Sinotron II accelerator; she avoided media interviews.

Major General Chang Weisi presides over the Battle Command Center meeting, calling it a combat zone in a time of war and withholding background from newcomers.

Mike Evans is the mastermind of the Adventists who deceived the ETO about their genocidal aim.