Da Shi

Da Shi investigates the string of scientist deaths that starts with Vera Ye in Oxford, and he starts watching her former students. His relationship with the Oxford Five begins with suspicion. He's too blunt for their taste, and they talk too fancy for his.

Da Shi is watching Jack's house when Jack decides to quit the game. Neither he nor the security system recognizes Tatiana, who gets in and kills Jack. She vanishes without a trace. The lead that ties Jack's death to Tatiana comes later, from Auggie, and from then on Tatiana becomes the top target of Da Shi's team.

With Jin undercover, Da Shi joins the raid on the ceremony of the movement tied to the game. In the shootout he hits Tatiana, who still escapes, and Ye Wenjie is arrested. He's the one who questions Ye. To catch the ship Judgment Day, he's the one who talks Auggie into switching her nanofiber research back on, even though she fears the countdown will return. After the Panama Canal operation, he and Wade recover the disk holding the San-Ti's messages. Later he releases Ye under watch, never taking his eyes off her.

When Nora, a woman Saul spent the night with, dies in a strange car accident, Da Shi suspects the San-Ti are targeting Saul. He gives Saul a bulletproof vest, and it saves him from a sniper in New York. After the Staircase project goes off course, Jin and Saul are crushed. Da Shi has no patience for it: he tells them they're at war and it's time to get back to work. He takes them to a swamp full of cicadas. The San-Ti call humans bugs, and the bugs are still here. The three of them walk out ready for the next fight, one that will now last for generations.

In Three-Body, the 2023 Chinese series, he's Shi Qiang, the Beijing detective from the book, played by Yu Hewei. His partner is researcher Wang Miao, and the pair are the heart of the story. At the end, it's Shi Qiang who takes Wang to a field overrun by locusts, the scene Netflix redid with cicadas.

In Liu Cixin's books he's Shi Qiang, a Beijing police detective everyone calls Da Shi. Netflix kept the nickname and gave him the first name Clarence.