On June 17, 2026, Chinese-language media including Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily carried news that a distant asteroid finally had a name. The Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature under the International Astronomical Union (IAU) had confirmed the official designation of asteroid No. 208663 as “Xu Xiyuan.” That name belongs to the Taiwanese actress who passed away last February from complications of influenza during a trip to Japan—the very Barbie Hsu whom we know better as the wife of Koo Jun-yup of the group Clon.
The person who discovered this star is the Hong Kong astronomer Yang Guangyu. In April 2002, he first captured the celestial body in the night sky of Arizona, in the United States, and at the time it was classified under nothing more than the dry provisional name “2002 GF11.” Yang has a history of giving the names of legendary Chinese-speaking stars—Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Teresa Teng—to the stars he discovers. This time, Xu Xiyuan’s name was added to that list. Local media recorded that “she, who in her lifetime believed in the existence of extraterrestrial life, has become a true star of the universe.” And so Xu Xiyuan became a star. Koo Jun-yup, who loves her, still remains by her side, like a planet orbiting its star.
Reading this article, I was reminded of the heartbreaking story of Cheng Xin and Yun Tianming—my favorite part of Liu Cixin’s novel “The Three-Body Problem.”
In his university days, Yun Tianming was a quiet young man who said little and kept to himself, and he would never forget the moment he first saw Cheng Xin, who was in the same department. At that time, Cheng Xin shone as brightly as the sun, and her smile lit up everything around her like sunlight. Yun Tianming never once spoke to Cheng Xin or approached her. He thought no woman would ever love a man as eccentric and sensitive as himself. All he could do was gaze at her from afar and bask quietly in the light she radiated. Like the Earth circling the sun’s orbit, it was enough for Yun Tianming simply to watch Cheng Xin from a distance.
And so the years passed. Yun Tianming used to toss weeds into his water bottle and drink the infusion, and a university classmate, inspired by that sight, developed a beverage with that same grassy aroma and grew it into a great business. In return for the idea, the classmate handed Yun Tianming the enormous sum of three million yuan. But around that time, Yun Tianming had been given a terminal diagnosis of late-stage lung cancer. With no hope of recovery, he chose euthanasia.
The last thing he did was to use that money to buy a single star. At the time, the government had proposed a project to sell ownership of stars more than 100 light-years away for the sake of space development, and people naturally had no interest in buying a star hundreds of light-years off that they could never reach in their lifetimes. Yet Yun Tianming, at that auction, bought the star “DX3906,” located 286 light-years from Earth. And, hiding his own name, he gave that star to Cheng Xin. He had quite literally pulled a star from the sky for the woman he loved.
Cheng Xin wonders who it was that gave her a star, but Yun Tianming, facing death, never once appears before her… And so begins the most heartbreaking love story in the universe. If I ever have the chance, I would like to tell people how “The Three-Body Problem”—known as a science-fiction novel that foretold an alien invasion of Earth—is in fact such a beautiful romance.
Koo Jun-yup and Yun Tianming resemble each other. I cannot fully know how much Koo Jun-yup now longs for Xu Xiyuan, but I, who know the story of Yun Tianming longing for Cheng Xin, can guess at that aching heart at least a little.
The bond between Koo Jun-yup and Xu Xiyuan goes back to 1998. The two crossed paths that year and felt a strong attraction to each other, but—as most young men and women do—they did not realize they were each other’s destined one. (This is just like an episode from one of Haruki Murakami’s short stories, in which a man and a woman who loved each other deeply lose their memories entirely, and when they meet again, they fail to recognize that they are truly each other’s destined love.) Because they were celebrities, the two had to date in secret as they traveled back and forth between Korea, Taiwan, and Japan; and then, pushed by pressure from those around them and by the climate of the time—that “a male celebrity who dates loses his fans”—they broke up, with no other choice. And so, leaving that brief encounter behind, the two went on to live their separate lives.
About a year after they parted, in 2001, Xu Xiyuan rose to become an Asia-wide star in the role of the heroine Shancai in “Meteor Garden,” the Taiwanese version of “Boys Over Flowers.” But long afterward, while re-watching that drama, Koo Jun-yup noticed that Xu Xiyuan was wearing, on screen, the couple’s jacket that the two of them had bought together in their dating days—and he said it pained his heart. Even after they had parted, even within the drama that changed her life, she had been wearing the clothing that held the memory of the two of them.
In the meantime, Xu Xiyuan married the Chinese businessman Wang Xiaofei in 2011, and had a daughter in 2014 and a son in 2016. It was a marriage that came exactly ten years after she had become a star with “Meteor Garden.” But their married life, carried on while shuttling between China and Taiwan, ended in divorce in 2021, as conflicts piled up—cross-strait relations worsening from the mid-to-late 2010s, and Wang Xiaofei putting out remarks that seemed to disparage Taiwan.
Hearing that news, Koo Jun-yup reached out first. He dialed the number from his memory of more than twenty years before, and astonishingly, Xu Xiyuan had not changed that number even once in all those long years…
At first he meant only to keep in touch as friends, but as their calls continued, the feelings of love he had buried deep in his heart rose up again, and the two confirmed each other’s feelings. As it happened to be the time of COVID-19, the only way to meet was to become family, so he said, “Xiyuan, if we want to meet, we have to get married”—and Xu Xiyuan was actually delighted. Working up his courage, Koo Jun-yup asked, “Let’s marry; can you become my family?” and Xu Xiyuan answered, “Why are you asking only now? You should have asked me twenty years ago.”
Because Taiwan’s quarantine policy at the time allowed only family members to enter the country, the two chose marriage if only so they could meet again. In place of a wedding, they held a meeting of the two families; in place of wedding rings, they had ring-shaped tattoos inked onto their fingers. In August 2023, on MBC’s “Radio Star,” Koo Jun-yup revealed for the first time the footage capturing the moment of their reunion. Meeting again after twenty-three years, the two said nothing and only held each other and wept. “I deeply regret the parting back then,” he said, his eyes reddening.
And so, after some twenty years had come full circle, the two became husband and wife in 2022. But the time they had together was not long. After their brief reunion, Xu Xiyuan became a star, and Koo Jun-yup, having stopped his activities, still longs for his wife and spends his days in mourning.
The story of Yun Tianming, who gave a star, and the story of Xu Xiyuan, who became a star, are different. And yet, Yun Tianming’s heart toward Cheng Xin and Koo Jun-yup’s heart toward Xu Xiyuan are no different. The love is gone to a place no human hand can reach. And yet, across hundreds of light-years, it still reaches us—a trembling light, heavy with longing. The star is impossibly far, but tonight, still, we can look up and miss it. Tonight, too, it shines.
Xu Xiyuan now remains in the universe as a star called “Xu Xiyuan.” Someday, far in the future, Koo Jun-yup will fly toward her. Just as Yun Tianming, who loved Cheng Xin, did…
—
By Sunjae Park
Editor, Korea Insight Weekly
Leave a Reply