Mei Yiqiu

Biodata

Background

Mei Yiqiu studied biology, physics, and psychology at Princeton. Charlie Dickinson and Selina were his classmates, and Selina became his lover. Dickinson later suggested that Mei’s breadth of interests—and lack of single-mindedness in romance—had kept him from matching Lester’s achievements or keeping Selina in New Jersey 512 579.

After leaving Princeton, Mei returned to China and established his laboratory in Wuzhong. His academic standing gave him exceptional independence: even the mayor had to arrange an appointment through his assistant before visiting 30 85.

Behind his public career, Mei was Nanke, a legendary Great Dream Mentor and member of the Awakeners’ Alliance. He concealed that identity even from Mei Ziqing throughout their twenty years together. Her father had asked him both to imprison him in the City of Sin as atonement and to look after his daughter 732 733.

Appearance

• Build and face: Very thin, with a typically East Asian face. In later depictions, his cheeks are deeply sunken and his cheekbones prominent 30 287.
• Hair: Stiff, curly, and unruly; initially graying and later entirely white. His resemblance to Einstein is repeatedly emphasized 30 184 385.
• Clothing: Favors Zhongshan suits 30.
• Signature accessory: Usually carries or smokes a pipe 30 266.
• Old age: Develops deeper wrinkles, a trembling hand, and persistent coughing. Near death, his formerly bristling hair lies limp 664 703.

Personality

Mei has a notorious temper and little respect for wealth or office. He openly berates people who displease him, regardless of their fortunes, and finds political maneuvering exhausting. To him, money is insignificant beside scientific questions and humanity’s future 30 385 491.

Those close to him see a warmer side. Qingmu describes him as proud, optimistic, and childlike; Huang Liang finds him approachable and endearing rather than the forbidding figure of his reputation. His childish competitiveness surfaces when Dickinson suggests that other scientists have surpassed him 175 512.

His affection does not exclude calculation. He deliberately exposes fellow scientists to despair to secure their cooperation, prioritizes a potentially universal defense over isolated cures, and ultimately accepts mass casualties as the price of resisting Gaia. He nevertheless admits that he cannot be certain his chosen path is right 191 238 733.

Mei regards scientific work as a vocation deserving dignity. When Mei Ziqing offers to massage him, he sharply objects that a scientist’s hands should be used to investigate the universe, not serve an old man 504.

Abilities & Skills

Scientific Expertise

Mei is a leading authority in psychology, neuroscience, and genetics, with less widely known achievements in polymer chemistry and quantum mechanics 30.

• Interdisciplinary research: Connects questions of consciousness with computing, information theory, neural interfaces, and advanced materials 241 427 527 570.
• Neural-interface analysis: Helps investigate Dickinson’s implanted chip and directs tests of its connections to spinal nerve bundles 514 527.
• Scientific resources: Owns an independent laboratory exceeding five hundred square meters in Wuzhong and can arrange specialist medical consultations through his local influence 30 178.

Mental Power and Dream Access

Mei possesses mental strength far beyond that of an ordinary person, despite initially appearing to lack practical dream-training techniques 175 703.

• Deep self-hypnosis: Achieves a depth of self-hypnosis that Qingmu considers exceptional 184.
• Guided dream entry: First enters another person’s dream with Qingmu’s assistance; he explicitly distinguishes this from entering unaided 184.
• Endurance: Wakes from the shared dream without visible strain, astonishing Hu Xing 185.
• Resistance to probing: Mei Ziqing hesitates to intrude into his mental world. At his deathbed, her search finds only darkness and silence rather than accessible memories 703 704.
• Posthumous presence: Appears before Mei Ziqing after his body has been cremated and buried, explaining that his work remains unfinished 732.

Lester Signature Deciphering

Mei can decipher the Lester Signature, a demanding identity-verification method combining mathematics, logic, deep self-hypnosis, and knowledge of the signer’s previous thought patterns 178.

• Personally deciphers Mei Ziqing’s Mind Matrix and vouches for her eligibility to attend a Foundation meeting 235.
• Recognizes that the method cannot readily screen humanity: few people can produce signatures, and suitable decipherers are scarcer still 178.

Strategy and Concealment

• Operational caution: Advises Qingmu to conceal his abilities rather than risk confronting Ronald Cohen before the invaders’ strength is understood 197.
• Organizational pressure: Uses a staged Foundation meeting and Laboratory No. 19’s chip to force scientists to confront their vulnerability 238.
• Compartmentalization: Conceals the combined purpose of human chips, Internet Consciousness, the Space Box, and Dream Guide 732.
• Decoys: Uses Yu Jianguo and Yao Jingjing to misdirect Saladin away from the true activation key 733.

Research and Projects

Story Role / Major Arcs

Warning of the Parasitic Invasion

Mei receives a letter from Situ Xingzhi bearing the warning “Trust no one!” Later, after Lester’s death, he questions Qingmu about dream consciousness and announces that humanity faces an unprecedented catastrophe 85 176.

• Investigates whether Xia Wenyuan’s physician and household members remain human before discussing sensitive plans 182.
• Identifies the shadow in Xia’s dream as an invading consciousness and relates Lester’s request for an autopsy, the discovery of a brain virus, and the destruction of the samples and report 185.
• Secures Xia’s agreement to provide a virus sample and one billion in deployable funding 185.
• Argues that a broadly applicable Space Box solution remains valuable even if Qingmu can individually save a limited number of victims 191.

Internet Consciousness and Ghost

Situ Yuli brings Mei classified records from Laboratory No. 19, whose neural-chip subjects had been completely controlled by the Internet. He invites her to join his laboratory and the Third Space Foundation, but she declines 216 221.

• Proposes protected Foundation communications using quantum satellite services and a smaller experimental network 238.
• Designs his intelligence test without a time limit because a conscious machine might deliberately conceal itself 241.
• Has Mei Ziqing establish a folder for Ghost, which appears across the network’s servers and terminals. Ghost subsequently investigates assassinations of scientists 266.
• Later warns that encryption cannot stop a consciousness roaming an electronic network and questions the assumption that such an entity cannot itself be a parasite 563.

Resistance Leadership

In the resistance episode involving Zhao Pengcheng, Mei is identified as a former UN chief scientific adviser and a leader of the Third Space Foundation who refused to sign humanity’s peace agreement with the parasitic consciousness. He subsequently went underground to lead the resistance 287.

• Offers to exchange Zhao Pengcheng’s life for Qingmu.
• Threatens to destroy Zhao’s consciousness using temperatures near absolute zero.
• Is interrupted by an explosion before the laboratory cools below minus one degree Celsius.
• The resistance’s undersea base is exposed because Zhao’s comrades have used him to locate it 287.

Worldwide Dream Guide Expansion

Mei promotes Dream Guide as a way for humanity to seize the initiative against enemies with superior innate mental power. He also supports Qingmu and Su Huilan joining the investigation of the missing research vessel 313.

• Political action: Calls for a worldwide ban on the Dream Society, scrutiny of Dream Foundation accounts, and a warrant for Ronald Cohen. The committee instead agrees to pursue Cohen through an international prosecution team 385.
• Accelerated release: Orders public-beta preparations to proceed without waiting for Qingmu and Su Huilan’s planned safety tests 385.
• Manufacturing security: Splits production responsibilities between HW Company and FSK Company because HW might be infiltrated 385.
• Risk tolerance: Permits Bian Ziyuan’s unauthorized Space Box experiments despite the acknowledged danger of a user’s consciousness failing to return 385.
• Anomaly screening: Questions why only slightly more than three hundred of nearly thirty million registered players show suspected Parasite anomalies 472.
• Scale: By his final hospitalization, Mei Ziqing reports more than two and a half billion dreamscape players worldwide, most still active 703.

Dickinson’s Chip Experiments

Mei brings Huang Liang to Vancouver to examine Charlie Dickinson, whose memory remains excellent but whose logical thinking has deteriorated during experimental work 511.

• Works with Situ Yuli to investigate Dickinson’s mysterious implanted chip 514.
• Recruits Huang Liang’s combined acupuncture and neurosurgical skills to test nerve responses around it 511 527.
• Supplies wired silver needles to measure electrical signals and investigates seven unused ports among the chip’s thirty-one connections 527.
• Warns Dickinson that courage alone will not suffice against the powerful consciousness they hope to encounter 527.

Mulberry Garden and the Estate

Mei visits Bi Shenghua at the ruined Mulberry Garden, hints at a hidden barrier beneath its tree, and gives her paintings showing the garden before its destruction 636.

• Secretly transfers Third Space and the businesses under Mei Laboratory to Bi Shenghua; she subsequently passes them to Xia Chujue alongside assets already managed for her 643.
• Names Xia Chujue as the beneficiary of his estate 710.
• Later explains that these arrangements are intended to equip her to rebuild order and become the Alliance’s next-generation leader 733.

Death and the Revelation of Nanke

Gravely ill, Mei asks not to be intubated and requests a peaceful death. He tells Mei Ziqing that she has deceived him for more than ten years 702.

• Rejects her proposal to rebuild existence as a connected dream paradise, warning that the worlds could become uncontrollable 703 704.
• Explains that Dream Guide’s three gods represent rules, spirit, and information 704.
• Refuses to disclose the Key to the Dreamscape under mental probing 704.
• Dies after Mei Ziqing places the Space Box sunglasses on his face. She later keeps vigil and arranges his funeral 704 706.

When they meet again in the dream world, Mei reveals that he knew her identity from the beginning. She recognizes him as Nanke and learns that his apparently separate projects were components of a plan against Gaia 732 733.

The Black Hole Plan

Mei frames the plan as a path purchased through the destruction of an entire earlier epoch of civilization. He cannot guarantee that it is right, but believes that failure would leave humanity with no remaining route forward 733.

Relationships

• Qingmu — Close friend and trusted collaborator; one of the few people allowed unrestricted access to Mei’s laboratory. Mei considers him a unique hope against the invaders and urges him to avoid unnecessary exposure 30 183 197.
• Mei Ziqing — Assistant, student, and eventual caregiver. Mei protects her standing within the Foundation while secretly knowing her identity; their final confrontation exposes his guardianship, concealment, and opposition to her dream-utopia plan 235 679 732.
• Selina — Former lover and Princeton classmate, later revealed as the second leader of the Children of Gaia. Mei becomes visibly upset when Dickinson teases him about their past 512 579 679.
• Charlie Dickinson — Old friend and Princeton classmate. Mei coordinates research into his implanted chip and relies on his willingness to confront the Internet Consciousness 512 527 579.
• Lester — Respected scientific colleague. They corresponded about Situ Xingzhi, and Lester’s warning and postmortem findings become central to Mei’s investigation 85 185.
• Xia Wenyuan — Major financial backer and operational partner in the Space Box project 185 710.
• Situ Yuli / Xia Xiaoxiao — Source of Laboratory No. 19’s records and later collaborator in the chip experiments 216 514 527.
• Situ Xingzhi — Sends Mei the warning letter and contributes significantly to the Space Box’s development 85 710.
• Bian Ziyuan — Young researcher whose talent Mei encourages; consults him about Kronos’s emergence as a conscious being 313 385 569 570.
• Hou Biao — Security protector who closely guards Mei during public appearances and travel 487 491 504.
• Bi Shenghua — Trusted custodian of the real activation key and the decisive timing of the Black Hole Plan 733.
• Xia Chujue / Meimei — Heir to Mei’s estate and laboratory, chosen to become the Alliance’s next-generation leader 710 733.
• Kitano Masatake — Mei Ziqing’s father, who asked Mei to imprison him for atonement and protect his daughter. Mei rejects the claim that Kitano simply lost to him, saying that he “only lost to himself” 699 732 733.

Equipment / Items

• Briar pipe — His characteristic possession; he prefers it to cigars and often continues puffing even after the tobacco has gone out 218 266 664.
• Space Box sunglasses — Placed on his face at his request immediately before his physical death 704.
• Landscape paintings — Depictions of the original Mulberry Garden that he gives to Bi Shenghua 636.
• Wired silver acupuncture needles — Supplied for electrical testing of Dickinson’s chip and spinal nerve connections 527.

Notable Quotes

“With the Space Box, everyone is a mental master.” 387

“A scientist's hands are precious, noble, irreplaceable! You should use them to grasp the stars, move atoms, and dispel the cosmic clouds obscuring our vision, not to massage a decrepit old man!” 504

“Hiding in dreams cannot stop Gaia's arrival.” 732

“I can't be certain. I'm merely holding to a path that humanity discovered at the cost of an entire epoch of civilization.” 733