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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

#261

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

pyuser583 wrote: post #213
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.

In the technology industry, many people are not native speakers. Low-level English is normal and accepted. On the job, I never speak above the level of a 13-year-old. AI generated English is hated. Consider using English, not software translation.

I hate that too, but my english writing is not good enough to write a long article, I edited this many times, I thought it's acceptable.Yes, I will try my best to learn english writing.

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

#262

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

themantalope wrote: post #104
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.

你可以把中文版发到网上吧

https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/22190111 这里是原版的，我稍微修改了一些部分。

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

#263

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #147
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.

Please use actual machine translation systems, not generative AI.

这样确实可以避免AI味儿，但是可能阅读起来会体验很差，我最早就是用machine translation翻译，很多部分变得非常wordy，同时令人费解。

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

#264

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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.

That makes sense. I’ve heard harsher stories in China.

I lived in west Richland Washington as a kid, my dad worked at Hanford which is a giant nuclear reservation in the western USA. It was mostly typical American kid life, so nothing on your experience, except my dad eventually died of a rare cancer and we got a settlement from the US Department of Energy.

I spent 9 years living in Beijing but first visited in 1999 when thinks were kind of still brutaleski. I’ve had a couple of experiences with the PLA (living in a building where I wasn’t supposed to be living and some off limit areas on the border for foreigners that they don’t tell you about).

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

#265

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

edwardtay wrote: post #158

This is a fascinating glimpse into a world most people will never experience. A few questions if you're open to sharing: 1. How did the classification level affect everyday social interactions? Were there topics that were implicitly off-limits even within the city among residents? 2. You mentioned the zoo in the middle of the desert - what drove that decision? Was it purely for morale/quality of life, or were there o…

很多人建议我不要用AI翻译，所以我用中文回答，辛苦大家用一下翻译功能。 1.厂区里几乎所有人认识所有人，我爸妈饭桌上的话题就是同事八卦。这样的话整个社会氛围其实有点压抑，只要你做了任何出格的事，很快所有人都会知道。 2.我也觉得建一个动物园简直是疯了，文章第二部分有提到这个。我大伯是负责挑选动物的人，从全国各地运动物过去。可能维护成本太高吧，动物园里的孔雀慢慢没了，变成珍珠鸡，最后只有几只家养母鸡了。 3.可能最大的不同是我非常好奇，对一切都很好奇，至今仍然是这样，对所有事情都想问一下为什么。另外一个很大的影响是，我感觉自己没有根，在世界上飘。文章第二部分有提到，整个厂区搬迁了，我没故乡了。 4.那一代人是真的认为自己在nation-building，不计回报的付出。很多人都是从发达城市调过去的，他们家人很多年都不知道他们在做什么。很奇怪，这可能被认为是最严重的洗脑，但是当他们离开404反倒找不到生活的意义了。

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

#266

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

qingcharles wrote: post #179

Were there any birth defects from the radiation? I'm still haunted by a BBC report I saw when I was a kid of residents who lived near some Chinese nuclear test facility and it showed the unbelievable birth defects their children were suffering.

As far as I know, it didn't happen in 404, cause factory area and living area are split. 我们厂区里好像没有，因为生活区和生产区是分开的。

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

#267

Post by drdeca »

frogpelt wrote: post #92
fcpguru wrote: post #68

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”…

FYI, 418 is the HTTP status code that means the server is a teapot.

Technically a HTTCPCP status code I think?

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

#268

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

lantastic wrote: post #223
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #70

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

Sounds interesting. What's the title?

Roaring Across the Horizon

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

#269

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

NonHyloMorph wrote: post #175
martin-t wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I have come to that conclusion as well. Curious if there is some political or cultural theorisation efforts out there on this?

It might be, but it's confidential, so I think it's hard to do such things in China.

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

#270

Post by lanyard-textile »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #251
Igrom wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

谢谢你的文章，太有意思了。这么神秘的故事容易吸引人，万一里面犯了少许语法上的错误，还会有人介意吗？人工智能用起来却可能正事与愿违，让大家质疑你对故事加以过夸张或编造。我建议，第二部不用机器翻译，手动翻译翻译吧。回复人消息，自己写也更好。 Thank you very much for the article, it was super interesting. The mystery in the story draws people in, and people surely won't mind a couple of grammatical mistakes. But you have to watch out: the use of AI makes it easy for people to suspect that the story might've been embellished. For the second…

Yes, I will try my best.Thank you.

Your best is more than good enough.

Thank you for sharing your story. It makes the world a better place.

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