Character from three-body-problem by
A muscular logger in the Inner Mongolia Production Corps whose chainsaw work in the Greater Khingan Mountains haunts Wenjie's view of what humanity does to the things it cannot replace.
Ma Gang is not cruel. He is one of millions of young men sent into the forests with quotas to meet, and he meets his quotas. He fells trees that have been growing since before the Qing dynasty, takes his lunch sitting on the stumps, and at night sings songs around the fire. He does not see his work as destruction; he sees it as production. For Wenjie, watching him, he becomes a small living example of the larger problem. He will not stop because no one has told him to stop, and even if they did he would only do something else equally damaging because that is what the system requires of him. He is the human race in a padded jacket.
A broad-shouldered young man in a stained padded jacket, bare-armed even in the cold when working, axe and chainsaw slung across his back. Hair cut close to the scalp. Carries himself with the unselfconscious physicality of someone who has not yet had a chance to be anything but his own labor.