A memoir of growing up in China’s classified atomic bomb base in the Gobi Desert.
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By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-286:5821 reply Hi HN, OP here.
I grew up in "Factory 404," a secret nuclear industrial city in the Gobi Desert that officially didn't exist on public maps. This is a memoir about my childhood there.
It was a surreal place: we had elite scientists living next to laborers, a zoo in the middle of the desert, and distinct "communist" welfare, all hidden behind a classified code.
This is Part 1 of the story. I'm happy to answer any questions about life in a Chinese nuclear base!
By thenthenthen 2025-12-2812:402 reply Thank you for sharing. I have been researching this topic for about ten years now and no first hand accounts like to talk or are they alive anymore, this is a very important story, especially in contrast the the dominant Western narratives, thank you!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2813:451 reply Thank you for this profound comment. It is incredibly humbling to hear this from someone who has spent a decade researching the topic.
You are right—the generation that built '404' is aging, and many of their stories are fading into silence. One of my primary motivations for writing this was the realization that if I didn't document these memories now, they might be lost forever.
I hope my first-hand account can provide a more nuanced, human layer to the historical data you've gathered. There is so much more to tell beyond the official records.
By embedding-shape 2025-12-2819:193 reply While reading through the post, I too felt it being similar to LLM generated text, but the stories and the perspective is uniquely human, or is there something specific that sticks out as inhuman from the text? Specific parts that sounds implausible?
It obvious that something was used to do the translation, but it doesn't feel worse than any other machine-translated texts, as long as I get the gist and the overall idea of what the author is trying to communicate, I feel like it's good enough.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2820:39 Yes I used AI to translate. You said "Specific parts that sounds implausible",and the second part is more unbelievable, I can only guarantee it's nonfiction.
By chaostheory 2025-12-2819:561 reply I’m going to guess that the dash gave it away. What a lot of people don’t see to understand is that using an LLM for translations is better than using vanilla translate. The traditional translation apps lose a lot of context and subtly, and they sound even more artificial.
I'd just ask writers to be up-front about it. "English isn't my native language, so this is processed using an LLM." Even the replies in HN comments scream "LLM".
By chaostheory 2025-12-297:45 The guy grew up in mainland China and is still currently in mainland China.
By panic 2025-12-2819:26 The fact that OP was a new account communicating completely via LLM made me suspicious. He does seem legit though based on his more recent comments.
By readthenotes1 2025-12-2819:34 It passed my turing test. I found it well written and interesting.
By thomassmith65 2025-12-2814:194 reply As often as not, these days, when someone online criticizes the West, it's for something absurd (eg: Churchill interfering with Hitler's continental invasions, or America using the word 'regime' when discussing Iran). Obviously, other times the criticism is wholly justified.
What "dominant Western narratives" apply here? I'm not going to bicker. I'm just curious.
Not OP, but one example could perhaps be American Prometheus and the Oppenheimer film. I would consider them "dominant Western narratives" about the origin of the nuclear bomb.
And like the person said, there is nothing inherently wrong with such a narrative. Like them I'm also curious about non-western narratives.
If most groups, cultures, religions, countries were more curious about "non-native" stories, maybe we'd all be a bit more open-minded and understanding.
By RealityVoid 2025-12-2821:04 I think Oppenheimer is pretty fair as it goes. It's pretty clear with it being the US perspective and they give credit to the other countries that they have good scientists that will figure the thing out (and they did). I think for exposing a man's experience, it's quite good. What makes me wrong? (An honest invitation to illuminate me)
By thomassmith65 2025-12-2821:081 reply The last paragraph is true, but up to the point where one becomes a useful idiot for a totalitarian state. I don't mean you, but on social media there are quite a few people like that.
What exactly are you advocating? You seem to be going back to Cold War logic.
Your initial assertion that people online criticizing the West are "often" criticizing "absurd" things is simultaneously wrong and condescending, some sort of thought-terminating cliché.
By thomassmith65 2025-12-293:561 reply Liberal democracy, I suppose.
How is it advocating for liberal democracy when you preemptively cast doubts on narratives other than the dominant Western one?
"Useful idiots" etc is the language of Cold War logic.
By thomassmith65 2025-12-2916:281 reply The lessons of the Cold War, a substantial duration of which I lived through, should not include "actually the American system and the Soviet system were equally bad".
The term "useful idiot" has no expiration date, and is more relevant now, in the age of social media, than ever. The world's major powers still attempt to propagandize their rivals.
By the_af 2025-12-2919:42 > The lessons of the Cold War [...] should not include "actually the American system and the Soviet system were equally bad"
I was arguing that the Cold War, a substantial duration of which I also lived through, introduced a mistrustful "us vs them" kind of thinking that is harmful. The Soviet system is no longer relevant, and unfortunately "the end of history" didn't happen as Fukuyama predicted. What matters today are the successes but also the failings, lies, and fabrications of the systems that endured, and it's not all China.
Cold War mentality is what makes you (specifically you, in this context) mistrustful of any narratives not dictated by your country. So when someone else, as in this thread, praised an article for showing points of views other than the dominant narrative [1], you instantly questioned what the user meant, out of suspicion. You cannot deny it was suspicion, because in other comments you clarified what kind of "criticism of the West" you meant (and tellingly, you equated listening to other narratives to criticism of the West!): that "as often as not" it's "absurd" whining about Churchill or about the term "Iranian regime", or (in another comment) claiming that "China is freer than the US".
> The term "useful idiot" has no expiration date
As long as you acknowledge it's a term of propaganda. It has no value today other than as a relic of the Cold War past.
I hope you're not trying to use it as a thought-terminating cliché to criticize anyone who wants to say something about China that doesn't belong with the usual tropes.
> The world's major powers still attempt to propagandize their rivals.
Yes, though we would likely disagree about which is the major world power more likely to engage in this tactic today.
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[1] what's even more puzzling is that I think TFA actually shows the same point of view as the Western narrative: China doing China things, secrecy, military projects, enclosed towns, executions. This wouldn't feel surprising or novel to an English-speaking reader, it would just confirm what they already thought of China!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2820:492 reply I don't think I'm criticizing Western narratives. This is simply my personal perspective and experience growing up there.
By girvo 2025-12-2820:56 They weren’t accusing you of that, but asking the other commenter what the meant :)
By thomassmith65 2025-12-2821:17 I know! It was a fantastic read. My comment was referring to another comment with an ambiguous reference.
By thenthenthen 2025-12-292:401 reply Short generalised answer; I grew up in Europe. The dominant media was of course Western media, more specifically American media, think Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It is extremely difficult to break out of that bubble.
By thomassmith65 2025-12-294:181 reply Well, that's true enough.
I was bracing myself for something edgier.
I don't know what I expected, "China has freer speech than America because Facebook censored antivax content" or something :)
You seem to be arguing against strawmen.
You picked a very fringe and bizarre belief (I honestly never read anything even remotely paraphrasing what you just typed) and made it seem so common that "as often as not" this is what people claim when they criticize the West.
It reeks of dishonesty. This isn't defending "Liberal democracy" as you claimed in another comment, it's attacking dissenting opinions by picking (or creating) the worst, most bizarre argument possible and presenting it as the norm.
By thomassmith65 2025-12-2917:061 reply What a mystifying comment. Cheers, though.
By thomassmith65 2025-12-2921:451 reply With respect, you seem immediately to have started out on the war path, and since then have been arguing with some imagined opponent (is he modeled on the 'love it or leave it, Tommy' character in Born on the Fourth of July?).
Responding to your criticisms today - and hopefully you're just having an off day today - is a dull task. They show little engagement, aside from the fixation with small phrases like 'useful idiot', with what I actually write.
By the_af 2025-12-2922:10 I wouldn't say "on the war path", but specifically about your dismissal of other narratives than the dominant one. I engaged you after I read more replies by you that confirmed my suspicions about your initial question.
It's not just about the term "useful idiot"; if you're being honest you'll admit you stated more things, including a bizarre strawman about people arguing "China is freer than the US". Do you deny this?
In another comment I went into more detail, but I guess if you're comfortable deflecting and claiming "you can't be bothered" that's ok.
By idiotsecant 2025-12-2815:294 reply There's no need to be defensive. We are largely westerners on a western website studying history from a western perspective. There's nothing wrong with that, it's natural. It just means we lose some understanding of events if that's the only side we know. OP is performing a service by documenting first-person history, and doesn't need to justify why it's important. It's important.
By sophrosyne42 2025-12-2816:381 reply I'm still curious what specific narratives you had in mind when you said "dominant Western narratives"
To be fair, my father in law who is Chinese and had to exile himself during the cultural revolution would pretty much say the same thing about the Cultural Revolution. Educated people in China who lived through it will certainly criticise the Cultural Revolution (or The Great Leap Forward for that matter) if they are in a situation when they can be honest about it.
So I'm not sure that specific comment would be considered to be a "dominant western narrative" unless you're going to tell me that older (and so who have lived through it) educated people in China who don't speak a word of English have a western mindset because they're educated.
Oh the fact that there has been some positives from the cultural revolution (by having educated people sent to the farm and rural area) doesn't stop the fact that the cultural revolution was a net negative for the country. How many works of arts have been destroyed due to it? How many people suffered? Nothing is ever white or black but it doesn't mean that we can take a small positive outcome and use that to justify atrocities.
The fact that you immediately think you know what the author I referenced has written and continue to plow forward with your pre-established conclusions is evidence of the “dominant western narrative” effect.
Accounts from well-off diaspora of any country will always be negative. It’s a self-selecting group with specific interests.
I mean I skimmed it earlier but I do plan to read it. That said my pre-established conclusions are based on first hand negative accounts of people who currently still live in China some of which do not speak English so weren't influenced by any "western narrative" (where I also lived for a number of years before moving to HK). Those are not accounts from a well-off diaspora.
EDIT: By the way, it's not that hard either to find books written by Chinese writers not part of the diaspora that are critical of the cultural revolution (Serve the people by Yan Lianke, 3 body problem by Liu Cixin) or the great leap forward (4 books by Yan Lianke). Obviously, writers living in China that have to deal with censorship tend to be less directly critical of it compared to writers from the diaspora but that doesn't stop some criticism to shine through.a
By xanthor 2025-12-2823:24 Even the official CPC line is critical of Mao. The assertion is not that all Chinese people believe the same thing or all necessarily belief different things from dominant western narratives on every issue. The assertion is simply that: some narratives are dominant in the West and treated as closed issues without any room for critical discussion or nuance. Deviating from those narratives is punished in a variety of ways through social and institutional enforcement.
By sophrosyne42 2025-12-290:22 We're talking about 404, not the cultural revolution
By thomassmith65 2025-12-2819:34 My comment was asking for details about its parent comment, not about the main post.
I was curious about the 'narratives' it mentioned.
They might be wrongheaded; they might be valid.
Either way, it piques my interest.
By therealpygon 2025-12-2817:41 It’s a valid question, despite the cynical delivery.
By throw10920 2025-12-2818:17 > There's no need to be defensive.
This is extremely manipulative. The only reasons to say something like this are to shame the person you're respond to and/or attack and discredit them and force them to respond defensively. Don't do this.
(it also immediately outs you as not having any valid points to make, because someone with a reasonable response doesn't need to stoop to emotional attacks)
Thanks a lot, I really first thought "404" was just a geek reference and not the actual code name !
I have some very good friends which are Chinese but are not able to read English, do you mind if I do a AI translation, and if you can check it to see if it translate what you're trying to convey ? (I propose that as I think it would be too much to ask to ask to redo the text in Chinese)
Edit: haha I see you actually did the reverse ! Do you mind sharing also the original CHinese script ? That would also help me with my own mandarin learning !
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2818:572 reply That’s so kind of you!
I did write and publish this story in Chinese first. You don't need an AI translation for them; the original text exists and has been quite popular in the Chinese corner of the internet.You can search for it using the title:《我在404长大》
Thanks. It's interesting to compare the original HN article with the browser-translated story (from https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20240110A03FKJ00).
I definitely appreciate the style of the HN English article, but I think the browser-translated version possibly gives a bit more context to some of the story.
e.g. This is the English version "We would clutch candy wrappers in our hands, giggling endlessly. The teacher would scold us for disturbing the nap, but we Hid behind our parents, still laughing."
This is the browser-translated version: "I kept giggling when I saw her, and she giggled too, and we kept laughing with small sugar paper during our lunch break. When my parents came to pick us up, the teacher criticized us for being undisciplined, and we still hid behind our parents and giggled."
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:131 reply 和目前的版本有一点出入，中文版没有“放射性沙发”这部分。
I do not wish harm to befall you, but is it that because of CCP censors that you removed it from the Chinese version? Did they ask you to remove it or did you do that proactively?
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2821:14 When I first write this in Chinese, they didn't censor anything, just let me published without question.The first guy wrote this been called by phone, they said it's secret, but nothing happened later. Before I published here I add some part, for example, the context of the famine, in Chinese version, people know what I talked about.
Is it just a coincidence that the HTTP code for “not found” became the same as the code name for this city?
By marssaxman 2025-12-2818:26 I find it hard to imagine otherwise. HTTP codes are based on the server return code system used in FTP, first published in 1971, where each of the three digits had a specific role and the values simply counted up from 0-9 as different meanings were assigned. HTTP is a little looser about the syntax, but it's the same general idea. Given the scheme, something was going to be code 404.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2818:58 Yes，it's just a coincidence.
By flybit 2025-12-298:36 [dead]
Since you mention a trip to Beijing, I wonder what the security precautions were to keep the secret base secret. I assume visitors from other cities would need to apply for a travel permit similar to the one still required for some border areas in Xinjiang and Tibet, but were there also restrictions on people leaving?
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2812:551 reply That’s a great question. In the early days, physical travel permits were indeed the norm. But the most effective 'security precaution' was psychological.
We had secrecy education (保密教育) starting as early as primary school. We were taught from a very young age that our city didn't exist to the outside world, and we simply didn't talk about it. But when I was a kid ,I didn't know anything about 404.
By sophrosyne42 2025-12-2816:462 reply Given those precautions and your training, was it hard to share about it? Aren't you worried about the Chinese government punishing you for sharing?
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:00 I did write and publish this story in Chinese first.So I hope it's fine.
By saltwatercowboy 2025-12-2817:373 reply He sells a storytelling course... perhaps this is meant to be a 'gotcha' where he reveals the con after the fact? My guess is there are people reading this who know something isn't quite right.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:051 reply I can personally guarantee that this piece is 100% non-fiction.My course also focuses on narrative writing techniques.Does 'Storytelling' have to imply fiction?In Chinese "story(故事）" just things happened, it can be real or fiction .
There are a lot of subtleties about connotation here. I would say that "storytelling" traditionally primarily meant fiction, but some modern uses also include narrative technique generally, including nonfiction and also marketing. There may also be older traditions of nonfiction storytelling, but that has some connotation of a ritualized or formalized activity (e.g. children sitting in a circle listening to a recitation).
The term that has no connotations of fiction is probably "narrative".
I think many languages have closely related words for fictional narratives and nonfictional narratives.
By onraglanroad 2025-12-2822:171 reply I don't think that's true. Perhaps in your dialect of English, but if I was down the pub and someone started with, "Did I ever tell you the story of when I...", I certainly wouldn't assume it was fictional.
By schoen 2025-12-290:32 I think "tell you the story of" has a different connotation from "storytelling"!
E.g. if you said someone was good at "storytelling" as a skill, then I would expect it to be most likely fictional. I agree that "tell you the story of..." could easily be nonfictional.
By anadem 2025-12-2823:13 To me "storytelling" certainly includes true stories, and isn't limited to fiction at all; "narrative" isn't a word I'd use in describing events.
By jibal 2025-12-298:42
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2821:18 And how did you know I sold storytelling course before, did I mention it somewhere?
Here's a chinese article about 404 published back in 2020.
https://chaiwanbenpost.net/article/%25E4%25B8%25AD%25E5%259C...
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-290:481 reply I ate dinner with this author, our parents know each other.
His story recounts some of your paragraphs word for word, e.g. the execution of the murderer who hacked another man with an axe, right down to the judge uttering the exact same phrase, the same anecdote about using sorghum liquor for the smell, that "the whole Gobi desert smelled of liquor", etc. It's too much coincidence for the two of you to write the exact same things, word for word, all from memory, after so many years.
Did you write the exact same paragraphs by chance, were the two blog posts a collaborative effort, did you get together and pooled your recollections, or what?
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-295:191 reply It is no coincidence. In a secluded and tightly-knit community like Plant 404, an extreme event like this would immediately spread throughout the entire area.
The author you mentioned is Li Yang. We know each other, and our parents know each other as well. He published his piece before I did. Since the person involved was his classmate, he was able to provide more first-hand details, such as the part about riding a bicycle to see that boy.
When we had safety education at school, the teachers would still use examples from twenty years ago—like someone getting hit by a car. This is how it was in the plant: once something happened, people would keep talking about it for twenty years.
By the_af 2025-12-2913:15 But right down to the same figures of speech, "the Gobi desert must have smelled of sorghum liquor", the exact same utterance by the judge, etc? Even the photos seem taken by the same person (in composition, style, etc).
Was there anything you can recall that 404 maybe had but the rest of China might not have because of its special status? Access to newer consumer technologies, or something like that? Just was curious if there was something “better” about living in a government secret beyond long train rides and melting neighbors.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2813:581 reply Exactly. To give you some concrete examples that I’ll dive deeper into in Part 2:
Soviet Architecture: Many of our residential and administrative buildings were designed and built by Soviet experts, giving the city a distinct 'Stalinist empire' aesthetic that felt very grand compared to the surrounding desert.
Elite Salaries: The wage levels in our factory were on par with those in Beijing, which was extraordinary given our remote location.
The 'Post-Scarcity' Bubble: For many families, daily expenses were minimal because the 'unit' (Danwei) provided almost everything. We regularly received rations of high-quality rice, flour, and oil as part of our work benefits, so we rarely had to spend money on basic survival.
In a country that was still struggling with scarcity, living in 404 felt like living in a futuristic, well-provisioned fortress. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll talk more about this 'gilded' lifestyle.
You’ve written more words in answers than in the original article. Thank you very much for giving us this privilege and providing “support” for details of your writings.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-295:56 Thank you for your kindness,I feel exciting to communicate with people from different culture.
Thank you for sharing these memories.
I'd be very interested to hear any thoughts you might have about Jung Chang's book "Wild Swans".
I read this book a year or two ago and learned a lot from it, but I also learned that many people who grew up in China take issue with the author's account. I'd be grateful for any remarks you may be able to share.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2813:423 reply You’ve touched on a very sensitive and important point.
It’s true that many people who grew up in China have a complicated relationship with narratives that focus on negative historical periods. There is often a defensive reaction, a feeling that such stories are 'smearing' the country's image.
However, as a writer, I believe that truth is always more important than a curated image. Authentic memories are often scarce, precisely because they are difficult to tell. My goal with the '404' series is to provide a piece of that missing truth—not to judge, but to document a reality that actually existed. In the long run, I believe a society is better served by facing its complex past than by forgetting it.
By ggm 2025-12-293:19 Wild Swans has received criticism for ignoring statistics and human demographic evidence on the scale of the famine, and therefore lacks an element of verifiability and number inflation. However the author wrote in a spirit of truth telling from familial experience as I understand it: she was finishing her PhD when I was studying at the same UK university (York)
By avhception 2025-12-2821:401 reply Hello from Germany, and thanks for the blog post. Fascinating read. I liked how you intertwined the personal point of view with the bigger picture.
"Facing a complex past" is a big theme in Germany, too, of course, and I think it's the only proper way to deal with it. Direct witness accounts and retelling are important and add something that a dry history book can't provide. Keep up the good work!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-295:21 Thank you so much!
By justsomejew 2025-12-2815:32 [dead]
By em500 2025-12-2812:46 What are you looking for exactly? And what issues did you hear from others who grew up in China? Most of the historical / political events (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution) are fairly accurate, while personal / family experiences are necessarily subjective. China is a huge, diverse country with a vast range of experiences from people growing up in different regions and eras (just like the US, or Europe), so it's hard to dispute any personal / family experience.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2911:371 reply Update: Part 2 is out now on my Substack. I will submit it as a separate post on HN later today once this thread cools down, to avoid spamming the front page. But for those asking, here is the direct link: https://substack.com/home/post/p-182824207
By JakeSc 2025-12-2912:48 Great memoirs! One question: You mentioned that sports activities were organized by the units in 404. Which sports were played?
By microtonal 2025-12-2812:141 reply I just wanted to say ‘thank you!’. This was a really interesting read, looking forward to the next part!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2812:561 reply Thank you! I will post on Monday.
By saagarjha 2025-12-2816:42 Please do share it here :)
By crazygringo 2025-12-2815:233 reply > 404 is a classified code for a nuclear industrial base.
Can you expand? A code under what system? What were some other code numbers and what (unclassified) things did they refer to? Did each code refer to a specific city or specific factory? Or were all cities/factories dedicated to a certain type of industry or military objective classified under the same code? Why did they teach you this code number growing up?
I'm really fascinated by this. Fantastic story overall, can't wait for part 2!
Most things in the Chinese military system are numbered rather than named. Military units are numbered twice - a public cover designator and a private true unit designator, originally four and later five digits. Factories got a three digit number - 296 for the small arms factory in Jiangshe, 816 for the uranium enrichment plant in Fuling and so on. Everyone in and around Factory 404 would have known it as such, but the mere existence of Factory 404 was a state secret.
The existence of such a large and conspicuous secret might seem bizarre to the post-cold-war mind, but it was fairly common in the West too. For example, the British Telecom Tower in central London stands at 189 metres tall and had a revolving restaurant that was open to the public, but was also a designated site under the Official Secrets Act.
By eastbound 2025-12-2822:23 Is it victim of the enumeration vulnerability, ie between 403 and 405 you can guess what they were busy with and therefore identify the activity? Or do they randomize the numbers, but then just 3 digits seems little for such a big country?
By orbital-decay 2025-12-2819:50 These are just numbered designations for many military organizations, just like in the Soviet Union. For example, pre-WWII Plant No.8 -> Artillery Plant 88 -> post-WWII Research Institute 88, nowadays known as TsNIIMash, with Special Design Bureau 88 led by Korolyov (known as RSC Energia today) as a spin-off.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:19 I don't know the code system, for me they are random 3 numbers(like Plant 504 : A uranium enrichment facility.)Thank you liking it, I will post the second part on Monday.
Well written, and interesting. I'm slightly surprised at the detailed memories you have from such an early age.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2811:15 Thank you! To me, my childhood memories are imprinted in my mind as vivid images. I'm simply using language to describe the pictures that I still see in my head.
Did you interview Yuan Gongpu or was this part from another source?
I'm interested in the laborers who did the work, not just the scientists who designed everything.
Thanks for your story.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:16 Sorry I didn't，his Chinese name is 原公浦，you can search this and there and many articles about him.
By nrhrjrjrjtntbt 2025-12-2810:361 reply Thanks Vincent for submitting, this is really fascinating.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2811:011 reply Thank you! I will post the second part soon.
By grumbelbart 2025-12-2811:281 reply Stupid question, but is 404 the real designator of that city, or a pun towards the HTTP error code?
Edit: And what a great read, thank you!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2811:331 reply Not a stupid question at all! 404 is the real, official designator (Factory 404) established in 1958, long before the web existed.
The coincidence with the HTTP error code is purely accidental, yet incredibly poetic—because for decades, this city literally could not be found on any public map.
I wonder why 404, any relation to 4 being similar to the word "death" in Chinese?
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2813:31 Yes,4 sounds similar to death in Chinese. But 404 was just a coincidence.
By embedding-shape 2025-12-2813:29 My first guess would be that they at one point decided to use numbers to designate locations instead of names, to make it easier for them to be secret (eg "codenames"). Then at one point someone figured that actually, lets not just thoughtlessly increment the numbers, but pick random numbers between 1-1000 so we add even more confusion. Kind of like Seal Team 6 I guess.
By viktorcode 2025-12-2813:491 reply Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this view into entirely different world for many of us!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2813:51 Thank you for the kind words! It’s been an incredible experience sharing this 'different world' with the HN community today.
This was fascinating, and a compelling story. Thanks for sharing it.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-295:21 Thank you for liking it!
Hi OP, as a side question, are you using an LLM like ChatGPT to translate or write your comments here?
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:56 Yes，English is not my first langue, I have to use AI translate for now.
What would you say to someone who has long been fascinated by nuclear weaponry and hopes to one day witness a test explosion?
I see even China hasn't tested in decades and so my chances of doing this are close to nil, but I ask because your answer could tell more how you feel about the technology and its future. My physics professor told me to study supernovae instead.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:13 To be honest, for me, nuclear explosions only exist in the imagery of propaganda and documentaries. I am not a physicist; I don't understand nuclear physics on a technical level.
My perspective on 'the nuclear' is purely emotional and sensory—I simply find it terrifying. I resonate much more with the raw, human suffering described in Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl than I do with the scientific future of nuclear power.
By ElijahLynn 2025-12-2815:45 Thank you so much for sharing your experience!
By zerofor_conduct 2025-12-2818:021 reply Fascinating and well told - many thanks!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:56 Thank you!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:20 Thank you! I will post the second part on Monday.
Great article, thx for sharing it! What i want to know, where exactly is this city? I mean geographically, i even could not locate it on GMaps or the like?? I mean, i get it, thats the whole point isnt it? Still curious.
By AlotOfReading 2025-12-2816:242 reply By r58lf 2025-12-293:45 that's the work site. The residential town is about 10km SW of that marker.
By pixl97 2025-12-2819:04 And it looks like they have their own dedicated coal powerplant.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:32 Yes，and I feel it's the sweetest home for many years.
By lamek 2025-12-2816:08 40.230000,97.360000
By SilverElfin 2025-12-2817:281 reply > During the “Three Years of Hardship” (1959–1961), when more than 30 million people across China starved to death, our factory area faced a desperate crisis. At one point, there were only a few days’ worth of rations left in the warehouses, and workers began to suffer from severe edema due to malnutrition.
I was curious about this part and lingering perspectives among Chinese citizens. How do they regard the past mass starvations and deaths in the 1900s? Are these events well known? Are they seen as a catastrophe? Do they blame someone (like the government) or is it seen as the cost of progress or a natural disaster? Do old and young people see these events differently from each other?
Thanks for writing and sharing!
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2819:29 I think it's well known, cause that generation are still alive.In the Northern China, the situation was often more dire because the land is unforgiving. In the South, people at least had the chance to supplement their rations by fishing in the rivers.While the official term often points to 'natural disasters,'it is widely recognized as a man-made catastrophe.
I remember when I was 4 or 5 years old, my mother told me stories about those years. As a child, I didn't understand the historical context; I thought mass starvation was something that happened cyclically, like the seasons. I vividly remember asking her: 'Does this happen every few years? Should we start stockpiling food now just in case?'
Even today, you will see older Chinese people who cannot bear to see a single grain of rice left on a plate. It’s not just frugality; it’s a ghost from 1959.
A common criticism of Chinese people is that they 'eat everything,' but a major reason for this is that China has endured more famines than almost any other nation in human history.
By hermitcrab 2025-12-2811:25 Very interesting, thank you.
By ggm 2025-12-293:46 > Witnessing such scorched-earth containment makes the modern definition of nuclear power as the ‘cleanest energy’ completely incomprehensible to me.
It's definitional in Gwh of productive, usable energy produced per tonne of damage to health. It also demands a lot of rigour against other forms of embedded energy regarding fugitive gas leaks, unassociated third party injury which is usually an externality. And of course it predates the rise in general efficiency of solar and wind and may no longer be true unless very specific criteria are applied like constancy.
But, awful though the trail of tears is behind example contamination events, including Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and Fukishima, counting death in coal or oil demands recognition of a huge problem in life shortening from contamination and injury at large in the whole cycle mine to chimney.
More people died from translocation consequences than direct nuclear radiation consequences in all three of the above. Not to minimise their deaths but if you move a million people in a rush, some die who otherwise would have lived.
"Modern" here is > 1949 and < "whenever wind and solar and batteries got so good"
My grandfather, who is a nuclear scientist, and my mom also come from a small closed-off city in Siberia (Russia).
Visiting my grandparents I remember we had to go through a sort of border control to get there.
My mom told stories of how the government would change the asphalt every year in that city to cover the nuclear dust.
By Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 2025-12-296:48 Interesting. Though I had heard that in vety cold climate (Siberia in that case) replacing the road asphalt every year is common because of the inevitable cracks caused the the temperature variation anyway.
By Vincent_Yan404 2025-12-2813:35 Wow, thank you so much for sharing this. It’s fascinating and deeply moving to see how similar our childhood memories are, despite being thousands of miles apart.
