The death of world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking at the age of 76 shocked the world on Wednesday, and China was no different. Hawking is a figure who along with the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein is often lionized throughout Chinese education, and China's newspapers were quick to write memorials praising his contributions to humanity while the country's social media paid tribute to his genius.

Without Hawking to guide us, we are only left with his written works to remember him by. But, if you're China, you're lucky enough to have received a personal message he left on his official Weibo micro-blogging account. Unfortunately, the problem is that it appears that Hawking's message hasn't gotten through to his audience.

Written on Nov 24 last year, Hawking's final Weibo post consisted of a video interview he made with TFBoy Karry Wang as part of Tencent's Next Idea Innovation Contest, a competition designed to encourage China's next generation of young minds.

Although Hawking urged China's youth to face the future with "curiosity and confidence," the contest had other ideas in mind ... namely, finding a way to firmly hold onto its past.

Awkwardly conducted with both Hawking and Wang both speaking into the camera instead of each other, the video interview nevertheless gets off to a solid start with Hawking giving his arguments that humanity must begin space colonization.

However, the interview takes a turn for the worse when Wang asks Hawking (at 2:22 of the video): "How should we protect our traditional culture while exploring the future and developing science and technology at the same time?" As Wang speaks, images of the Temple of Heaven and Beijing's new performance hall flashes on the screen.

Hawking answers with the following, leaving nothing to doubt:

I do not believe that traditional culture will disappear. I think our art and music are human orientated and would be meaningless to an alien species. I do not think we need to worry.

For a man who was more concerned about saving humanity from extinction, it seemed like Hawking had a broader scope in mind instead of one that is in the shape and size of China. And yet, as though their segments were taped at separate times, Wang immediately followed up Hawking's answer with this off-key response:

Maybe science and technology will provide new and interesting possibilities for us to revive our traditional culture.

Wishful thinking? Sure. Following the same conversation thread? Not at all.

It's clear that Hawking misunderstood Wang's question as being not specific to China while Wang seems to have misunderstood Hawking's answer to be wholly specific to the Celestial Kingdom, alien species notwithstanding.

How did this interview get to this point? Let's take a step back for a moment to fully appreciate the Next Idea contest.

At the same time as China makes huge advances in fields like supercomputers, artificial intelligence, and cloning, the country also looks to employ cutting-edge technology to help maintain the culture and traditions that make it the way it is, an aim realized by campaigns and contests like Next Idea. In fact, one of the main beneficiaries of the Next Idea Innovation Contest is Beijing's greatest cultural attraction, the Forbidden City, which is looking for ways to turn itself into a new intellectual property that can be marketed to a wider audience.

In practical terms, the contest finds ways of modernizing ancient Chinese painted landscapes with computer graphics as seen in this Next Idea promotional video that features a hybrid soundtrack of both Peking Opera and rap lyrics. For this reason, China's next generation will be responsible for guarding its past and future, or as one headline put it, a people who must be "given free rein to dream when facing the future without ever forgetting the past."

With these conservative restraints placed upon them, we've managed to meander a long way from Hawking's initial message of inspiring China's youth with "curiosity and confidence." But, as we say farewell to the greatest mind of our generation, we may have to admit that we weren't listening the first time around.

More stories from this author here.

E-Mail: charlesliu1 (at) qq (dot) com

Twitter: @Sinopath

Photos: 56, Weibo