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.

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》

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Thank you! I will post the second part soon.

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

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.

Thank you for liking it!

Thank you!

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

https://www.google.com/maps/place/40%C2%B013'48.0%22N+97%C2%...

40.230000,97.360000

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.

Technically a HTTCPCP status code I think?

412 is the area code for Pittsburgh and is all over the place with branding and slogans. Area codes in general are a common signifier within communities and the population. It’s always neat to see locals rep their area codes as advertisement or branding, I like it

I was surprised moving from Atlanta to San Jose that they have very similar area codes (404 408).

I was extra surprised that there's a chain of crepe places called "Atlanta Crazy Crepes" which as far as I can tell are located only in Akihabara in Tokyo and Eastridge Mall in SJ.

Doesn't this happen for lots of area codes? 305 for Miami in particular as Mr. Pitbull likes to remind us.

Wow It's amazing,I really don't know this before.Thanks for sharing!

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oh i agree, an OK town. But man 406 PA, was just not acceptable.

Named after the original town in Oklahoma, I presume?

There's also Truth or Consequences, NM named after a game show (I believe?)

Unfortunately the comment you're responding to is a joke. HTTP status code 418 is a joke response: "I'm a teapot".

That’s a lot of LLM replies, and counting.

Try machine translation not general LLM based ones. Google translate does use an LLM, Gemini, now for translation, but it preserves the nuances of your own speech instead of injecting the clear markers of LLMs like you'd get if you tried to do it via Gemini or ChatGPT directly.

So, write your replies in your native language then post them into Google translate, I guarantee it'll sound better and people won't think it's an LLM.

That's such a great use of an LLM! Thanks for sharing!

Unfortunately the ever-present desire for the moneys made folks use LLMs to produce lots and lots of slop, polluting not just the web but even the trust to each other. The default nowadays when reading a piece of text that has even the slightest LLM vibe is to assume it's made-up slop. That's very sad, but necessary, because it's just everywhere.

It's so sad because the tech could really bring people together. Creating almost seemless translations. That's why your work is such a great example for the good this could bring if we'd not have so many greedy people among us.

I posted this in Chinese first.And use AI translated.

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 part, it might be better to try translating it manually; the same goes for writing replies.

The reply to the 418 joke is clearly generated, not just translated.

I would like to read the original Chinese version as a native speaker. Is there any chance you post that (the article itself) too?

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.

Right, you do what you think is best. I'm in no position to tell you what to do. Having said that, it comes off as robotic and impersonal. Personally, I'd rather read you trying to write with your own words what you wanted to write. That is, if you're not AI yourself which there are high chances of and I'm leaning on that theory.

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

I'd rather read something in "bad English" than laundered through generative artificial intelligence tools.

You're not just translating though

Write your comments in Chinese, we will use our own translation.

你可以把中文版发到网上吧

Please use actual machine translation systems, not generative AI.

> It's like writing something with a commodity Bic ballpoint vs a fancy fountain pen with expensive ink. The style of the prose itself is not the valuable artifact, at least not here (it may be in certain places e.g. poems and novels), unless you think well-written/well-spoken people are automatically more veritable or intelligent, which is just as shallow as lookism.

I think this simplifies the entire discipline of literary criticism and I suppose every other related science. You can write the same prose with both the Bic and the fountain pen; the quality of pen only affects the material quality of the writing—the ink—but not the style (rhetoric? eloquence?) of the writing (i.e., the contents of language, how it’s conveyed, etc.). We aren’t arguing whether it’s appropriate to depreciate writing generated by an LLM to using speech-to-text as opposed to using a keyboard.

The style of the prose does contribute to the value of the artifact and speaks to the repute of the reader in addition. Readers care about what you say and how you say it too.

Nonetheless I as well as others have good reason to interrogate the intrinsic value of LLM-assisted writing especially when it refers to writing like the one being discussed which I reckon qualifies as a part of the “literary non-fiction” genre. So it’s apt that we criticize this writing on those grounds. Many here have even said that they would prefer the 100% genuinely-styled version of the author’s experience which is apparently only 1.5 points lower than whatever their verbal acumen is. [1] Which I imagine places them around the rank of your average American...and I assume so with charity toward the Americans.

While I think some LLM accusations are lazily applied I think communities such as this one benefit from these discussions when waged critically. Especially when status and social capital are of implicit interest.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46411214

Edit: nevermind

I don't know if those coordinates are correct. They seem to be the exact coordinates of Jiayuguan City [0], but then the article also says that the 404 site is located "100 km west of Jiayuguan City," with living areas later relocated to Jiayuguan. So I think the article authors just put the Jiayuguan coords there.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiayuguan_City

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

Feels AI-ish as well, and OP used em-dashes in some of their replies. But it could be attributed to a language barrier of sorts requiring the use of LLMs to communicate

Those pictures photoed by me and my parents,I did use LLM to translate, cause my english is not good enough to write a long article.

It's published in China many years ago, and it's nonfiction. I just used AI translate to English. And can you make up something to cater HN, like nuclear power stuff?

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.

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

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.

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 at the end of the 70s who worked in advanced language areas (think the foundations of ML) formal methods, CSP, you-name-it. People like these in networking (I subsequently know and worked with in governance contexts) built and led the chinese academic internet. These people are now senior academics in the Chinese academy of science. They're serious, smart people.

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

So to my own knowledge if not "in" the cultural revolution certainly very rapidly afterwards assuming you take its run up into the 70s.

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

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".

I could believe it, the timespan should be 1966-1976, so maybe in late 70s. I know a lot of automation software was being written in my Eastern European socialist country in assembly language around 1974. I think mostly for 6800-based chips like probably MOS 6502.

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.

> I am reminded that the only real power comes from violence

Rather from numbers in my opinion. "Divide and conquer", or its modern equivalent "confuse and manipulate", is what makes violence effective. It is always striking to compare how much people are similar, even in our divided society, versus how much dissimilar they think they are. I'm used to help organize long boat trips with all kind of people from various backgrounds, and it's funny to watch.

In the past it was easy to convince people that "the other" was strange and dangerous, due to physical distance. Today we achieve the same with social media.

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

What is this „Chat Control in the EU“ ?

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.

Roaring Across the Horizon

> This argument that nuclear power generation is clean if you ignore the times when it isn't seems a bit no-true-Scotsman to me.

The same can be said about wind and solar. Nothing about producing the rare earths required is clean.

Even if we include Chernobyl, nuclear is still by far the safest source of energy when looking at deaths per TWh generated.

> I can, off the top of my head, name two sites that are dangerous decades after they were polluted

Two? I can only count one. Fukushima is almost perfectly safe today, although exclusion zones still exist.

The LLM flipped from “scorched earth” to “ bad governing” as the sofa faded from its context window.

The metaphor says maybe “extreme cleanliness is like war”, second pass war is bad governing…

Don’t engage with it.

At this point, you’re arguing with an LLM, not a coherent storyteller. The events your question refers to have been downgraded in the context window.

It’s like the game of twenty questions where the LLM doesn’t have a persistent secret object, it’s just simulating consistency.

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You can even take it a step farther because animals display the same type of behavior

Same in Brazil, but I think everyone thought their classes were superior regardless of their letter! Obviously B is the best btw ;)

mine too, but none was such a dick. also, anything related to school (particularly at a young age), is not viewed as something to boast of (at least in my experience in italy, serbia and portugal).

Who?

Thank you!

Right, but the statement extends to the present state of mind of the writer. They're saying that they currently find the notion that nuclear energy can be clean or the cleanest as absurd based on their childhood in the infancy of the program.

Isnt it currently the consensus that nuclear energy can be one of the more clean energy sources? Because they seem to hold their childhood view that thats crazy