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!
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.
> 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!
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.
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 !
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.
> 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?
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
404 does sound a bit like a nightmare posting, and God knows what the adults felt like. They probably couldn't say much. But children see things very differently. I forwarded this on to several people.
Thank you for sharing this with others. You’ve hit on the exact emotional core I wanted to explore.
For the adults, 404 was a place of immense pressure, secrecy, and often sacrifice. But for us kids, it was just 'home.' We played in the shadows of giants and nuclear reactors without a second thought.
That contrast—the 'nightmare' for the parents and the 'playground' for the children—is what makes these memories so surreal to look back on. I’m glad that perspective resonated with you.
My father-in-law worked there as a programmer during the Cultural Revolution. There were always guards on the other side of the (locked) office door. Sometimes they’d shoot at random things to remind the nerds just who was in charge.
When I worked at Microsoft the biggest complaints were parking and the variety of subsidized foods at the cafeteria.
While I absolutely agree that in the current state of things most western people are so well off they can't even imagine what it means to actually be oppressed and suffer, I can't help but notice that the current state of things can quickly change and that we're in a constant yet barely visible struggle with forces that want to bring about just that kind of oppression here and that we're slowly losing it.
You might think this is about the rise of fascism[0] in the US, Chat Control in the EU, the failure of revolution in Belarus and Turkey, censorship in the UK, martial law in South Korea, etc. But it's about all of those.
I am reminded that the only real power comes from violence (performed or threatened) and that we keep building cool stuff because we get paid a lot, yet we don't own the product of our work and it is increasingly being used against us. We don't have guns to our heads yet but the goal of AI is to remove what little bargaining power we have by making us economically redundant.
At every point in history, oppressing a group of people required controlling another (smaller but better armed) group of people willing to perform the oppression. And for the first time in history, "thanks" to AI and robotics, this requirement will be lifted.
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.
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.
in the ideal situation - yes, but since Russia is big and the climate is cold almost everywhere the government usually does not do it except in big cities.
> Our license plates started with “Gan-A,” the same as the provincial capital. We laughed at people from other cities like Jiayuguan (“Gan-B”) or Jiuquan (“Gan-F”). Even as kids, we joked, “We’re still number one.” Because our grandparents were the country’s elite and we lived in the “Nuclear City,” I always felt like I was living at the center of the world.
Am I reading too much into this or does China have a culture of competition which involves mocking those you deem below you even for the most shallow reasons?
Amazing, related story. I had a friend that always talked about growning up in 418 Pennsylvania. It began as a company town for a ceramics manufacturer in the 1920s. The factory specialized in heat resistant vessels. You know like kettles, pitchers, industrial teapots. Each stamped each with a model number tied to production lines.
Line 418 was the most profitable. When the post office opened, the clerk assumed “418” was the town name, not the factory line number. By the time anyone noticed, mail was flowing, checks were signed, and no one wanted to correct the federal government. The factory closed in the 1950s. The town shrank but remained oddly proud of its name. Residents leaned into it without explaining it.
On my trip back from china this week I watched a Chinese movie about their nuclear bomb project. Basically the equivalent of Oppenheimer. Quite interesting movie and now I am reading this
The naming is almost too perfect. Someone in the bureaucracy looked at a classified city that couldn't appear on maps and called it "404." Either that's dark humor from an engineer who knew exactly what they were doing, or it's a coincidence that's funnier than any joke.
Also curious about the zoo. A zoo in the middle of the Gobi Desert for a city that doesn't exist. What happens to the animals when a place like that shuts down?
"My biggest dream in kindergarten was to be a big brother. I wanted to care for a younger sibling. But under the One-Child Policy, if my mother had another child, she and my dad would lose their jobs. She had to follow the rules and terminate a pregnancy. My wish was impossible."
"Once, a soldier entered the residential area after coming into contact with radioactive material. His hands turned a necrotic black, like charred wood. The authorities didn’t just isolate him; they traced his entire trajectory and burned every single item he had touched. A friend of my father lost his entire sofa because of this. Witnessing such scorched-earth containment makes the modern definition of nuclear power as the ‘cleanest energy’ completely incomprehensible to me."
69 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 60.4 ms ] threadI 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!
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!
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 !
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.
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!
I'm interested in the laborers who did the work, not just the scientists who designed everything.
Thanks for your story.
For the adults, 404 was a place of immense pressure, secrecy, and often sacrifice. But for us kids, it was just 'home.' We played in the shadows of giants and nuclear reactors without a second thought.
That contrast—the 'nightmare' for the parents and the 'playground' for the children—is what makes these memories so surreal to look back on. I’m glad that perspective resonated with you.
Always interesting to read about people's lived realities that are completely different
When I worked at Microsoft the biggest complaints were parking and the variety of subsidized foods at the cafeteria.
You might think this is about the rise of fascism[0] in the US, Chat Control in the EU, the failure of revolution in Belarus and Turkey, censorship in the UK, martial law in South Korea, etc. But it's about all of those.
I am reminded that the only real power comes from violence (performed or threatened) and that we keep building cool stuff because we get paid a lot, yet we don't own the product of our work and it is increasingly being used against us. We don't have guns to our heads yet but the goal of AI is to remove what little bargaining power we have by making us economically redundant.
At every point in history, oppressing a group of people required controlling another (smaller but better armed) group of people willing to perform the oppression. And for the first time in history, "thanks" to AI and robotics, this requirement will be lifted.
[0]: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
I smell cooked
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.
It's called bad governing. To connect nuclear "not clean" with such bad governing is bit much.
Am I reading too much into this or does China have a culture of competition which involves mocking those you deem below you even for the most shallow reasons?
Line 418 was the most profitable. When the post office opened, the clerk assumed “418” was the town name, not the factory line number. By the time anyone noticed, mail was flowing, checks were signed, and no one wanted to correct the federal government. The factory closed in the 1950s. The town shrank but remained oddly proud of its name. Residents leaned into it without explaining it.
Also curious about the zoo. A zoo in the middle of the Gobi Desert for a city that doesn't exist. What happens to the animals when a place like that shuts down?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_city
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_townlet