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Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

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Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#291

Post by avhception »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #58
ocfnash wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 scarc…

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!

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#292

Post by maxglute »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #242
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is completely plausible, and no details in the story are outlandish for China. Heck, it feels tamer than I would imagine, even.

Part 2 is the harsh part, including death and execution. And now I know how hard life was, but when I was a kid, I just feel 404 is the sweetest home.

I was invited to lunch near factory 541, tank city, a pseudo closed area sprawled in some Shanxi valley. Turned out it was lunch and a show, they were going executing some drug traffickers from strike hard. Impromptu don't do drug lesson from uncle. We had to turn around because I had naturalized western citizenship and weird dialect by then and they figure security would not let us through. It was pretty surreal experience vs how nice and insular danwei life was otherwise.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#293

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #238
shimman wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I was willing to suspend disbelief but that comment kinda did it there.

My sincere apologies to everyone here. You caught me red-handed, and I feel terrible about it. I promise that the story of 404 is my own, lived experience. Just as the whole article, they are translate by LLM.

I thought 418 was something similar to 404, and made a stupid joke. Sorry again.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#294

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

Reason077 wrote: post #278

Is the “404: not found” error code actually a humorous reference to China’s secret nuclear city? After all, HTTP was invented at CERN, a nuclear research institute. Staff there would presumably have been aware of “404” and probably made jokes about the fact that it didn’t exist…

It's a coincidence.It’s defined both a digital void and my childhood home is the kind of irony.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#295

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

Aboutplants wrote: post #135
Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You caught me! Yes, I am using AI to assist with the translation. My IELTS score is 7.5, but my writing band is 6.0. I write my thoughts and comments in Chinese first and then use AI to translate them. The entire article was also translated from my original Chinese manuscript.

Tip, I’d rather read slightly bad grammar due to simple translation than AI assisted interpretation of what you are wanting to say.call me old fashioned I guess

The first version was translated by google and it's wordy, sometimes doesn't make sense, so I used Gemini this time. I sent the first version to many people and no one could finish it ;)

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#296

Post by onraglanroad »

schoen wrote: post #233
Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 recitat…

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.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#297

Post by eastbound »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #72
moffers wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 gi…

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.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#298

Post by johanyc »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #242
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is completely plausible, and no details in the story are outlandish for China. Heck, it feels tamer than I would imagine, even.

Part 2 is the harsh part, including death and execution. And now I know how hard life was, but when I was a kid, I just feel 404 is the sweetest home.

is part 2 already published somewhere in chinese?

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#299

Post by eastbound »

jdietrich wrote: post #177
crazygringo wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 t…

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?

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#300

Post by sersi »

xanthor wrote: post #240
sersi wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

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