Stephen Hawking’s many Chinese fans are over the moon as he joins them on social media

Stephen Hawking had a cosmically good week in China.

“Greetings to my friends in China! It has been too long!” the 74-year-old British astrophysicist wrote in his first post on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, last week. “In my physical travels, I have only been able to touch the surface of your fascinating history and culture. But now I can communicate with you through social media.”

A Chinese translation followed.

The post immediately went viral, racking up nearly 400,000 reposts and 900,000 likes.

“I feel like I’m connected to the whole universe by following you,” wrote one user.

“I learned about Hawking from Chinese language textbooks when I was a pupil,” another user — 23-year-old He Shan, a restaurant owner in central Hunan province — said in an online chat. “His greatness is inexpressible.”

China’s obsession with the author of “A Brief History of Time” may trace back to its obsession with outer space. Beijing’s space program began in the 1950s under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung — who once lamented that China couldn’t even send a potato into space — but stalled under his disastrous political campaigns of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

China launched its manned space flight plan in 1992 and 11 years later became the third country in the world to send a human being into outer space. Now, it intends to forge a space program that can rival that of the United States.

Then there’s the popularity of the American sitcom “The Big Bang Theory,” which has boosted Hawking’s fame among the younger generation. The show’s main character, Sheldon Cooper, is a fervent Hawking admirer, and Hawking once played himself on the show.

“I only saw Dr. Hawking in a textbook before, but I got to [see] Hawking’s real persona in the show. He’s so lovely!” said a 32-year-old fan whose Weibo user name is “Captain Sheldon.”

Hawking last visited China in 2006, when he spoke at an international conference on string theory. He has “acquired a cult status among Chinese youngsters much like that of Tom Cruise,” the state-run New China News Agency reported at the time.

For anybody keeping score, Cruise has about 5 million followers on Weibo, which has become popular among Western celebrities and politicians as a marketing tool.

Kobe Bryant has 4.4 million, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has 830,000 and Ivanka Trump has 14,000.

Stephen Hawking has 3 million, but he collected them in two days last week, with two posts.

It was the second post that blasted him into orbit. He was announcing the “Starshot” project, an effort to send “nano crafts” traveling at 20% of the speed of light into the star system Alpha Centauri.

The project is co-directed by Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and supported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

“Greetings to everybody in China from NYC,” Hawking wrote. “If we are successful, a flyby mission could reach Alpha Centauri about 20 years after launch, and send back images of any planets discovered in the system.”

“It is exciting to be involved in such an ambitious project, pushing the boundaries of ingenuity and engineering,” he continued.

The post has amassed more than 130,000 replies and 500,000 likes, even though many commenters confessed to confusion about the project.

“I’m so happy that I can read such wonderful information when I just woke up,” one follower wrote. “Though I can’t understand it completely, it is obvious that it’ll be a great breakthrough.”

Hawking’s Weibo account is run by Stradella Road, a Santa Monica-based digital creative and social agency. In an email, the company’s chief executive, Gordon Paddison, said that all posts are written personally by Hawking.

Employees who speak Mandarin translate his messages, manage his profile and give him translated comments.

“Professor Hawking [has] great respect for the Chinese people and he knows there are many people in China who are interested in science and the work he has been conducting,” Paddison said.

Hawking’s two posts contain 171 and 350 words respectively, much longer than the standard Weibo posts of 140 words. “In the future, some of Professor Hawking’s thoughts involve principles that may require a longer format than micro-posts,” Paddison said, “and we hope that his fans will be understanding.”

jonathan.kaiman@latimes.com

Yang is a special correspondent.

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