Growing Up in “404 Not Found”: China's Nuclear City in the Gobi Desert

Thank you! I will post the second part soon.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you! I will post on Monday.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for the kind words! It’s been an incredible experience sharing this 'different world' with the HN community today.

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.

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.

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.

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.

40.230000,97.360000

Is it just a coincidence that the HTTP code for “not found” became the same as the code name for this city?

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》

Yes，English is not my first langue, I have to use AI translate for now.

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.

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.

Thank you!

Thank you! I will post the second part on Monday.

Sorry I didn't，his Chinese name is 原公浦，you can search this and there and many articles about him.

Thank you for liking it!

Great memoirs! One question: You mentioned that sports activities were organized by the units in 404. Which sports were played?

[delayed]

China made its first computer in 1958 and its first 1 megaflop computer in 1973, so yes, their nascence of computer programming came preceded the Cultural Revolution, about 10 years after the West,

A generation of gifted, and hard working graduates emerged out of the bitter ashes of the cultural revolution. Their delayed entry to tertiary education and the circumstances behind it gave added impetus to their desire to study and gain knowledge.

I've met several across different disciplines and two (at least) in computer science and networking. When the barriers for travel came down, many studied and worked abroad, I met some in Edinburgh who worked in advanced language areas (think the foundations of ML) formal methods, CSP, you-name-it. These people built the chinese internet. These people are now senior academics in the Chinese academy of science. They're serious, smart people.

There was also a 1970s VLSI boom in China. It's why they were so successful in the 80s and 90s outsourcing chip commercialization area.

So to my own knowledge if not "in" the cultural revolution certainly very rapidly afterwards.

It was also a Cold War. My father-in-law and mother-in-law were both gifted mathematicians and mainframe programmers. She also designed CPUs. She is a sweet sweet person and a major badass. She is my hero. She’s in her 80s and was more accomplished in her 20s than you and I put together will ever be.

The Great Cultural Revolution were the Golden Age of PRC. The economy grew rapidly. If you had the Little Red Book, you could take a free train to join the Great Rally held at Beijing.

Hundreds of thousands of micro-computers had been built during that period. For example, there were many used in the textile factories. Workers there were encouraged to learn programming. They wrote programs to control the weaving machines.

After Capitalist Roaders seize the power through a palace coup, they told everybody that, the Great Cultural Revolution wrecked the economy. So most were ditched.

As programmer shortage emeraged in the 1980s, Capitalist Roaders start promoting "grab toddlers to computers".

The so called Cultural Revolution was certainly programming, just not of the computer variety and at massive human cost.

I don't disagree with that, but I want to point out that this is one facet of hedonic adaptation. People will always complain about of what they don't have. For instance, most inmates in inhumane prisons would love to have the life you describe if they could enjoy some degree of freedom as a result.

Korolev's story comes to mind instantly. Not only his of course.

I once (>20 years ago) had luch with our sales representative in ... was it Malaysia or the Philippines? In his custom made blue suit, he told me in perfect Oxford English how his grand father had to kill several fighters from enemy villages in order to be allowed to marry his grand mother...

I don't know how exagerated that was, but yes sometimes things go fast:)

I think that’s the beauty of storytelling—it turns 'nothing new under the sun' into something deeply personal and hit us differently.Thank you for sharing that connection， it makes the world feel a lot smaller.

Whenever people start talking about things called "the rise of fascism in the US" as if its a foregone fact rather than a highly fringe opinion, it's unfortunately rather easy to assume that the person doesn't have a good ability to tell fact from "story they heard online from a web post".

It's fine if you want to argue that there is a rise in fascism in the US, but you need to actually pose that argument, not just talk about it as if its true and that everyone agrees with you.

Also, there is not currently any martial law in South Korea. That was a brief event that lasted a matter of hours from when it was announced and when it was repealed. It's an open question if any actions were actually performed under the guises of it.

The Netherlands in 2025 is a decadent country were everyone can do whatever the hell they want.

But a gay man growing up in the 1950s in a rural village was plenty oppressed. It's actually quite fascinating how in the 1960s/70s we had a Cultural Revolution of our own that ended a thousand years of religious oppression! And we didn't even have a Mao.

But never forget we are always one bad week away from sliding backwards.