Vincent_Yan404

6 ms·

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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Yes, it's really like the small town in Oppenheimer.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
This is where it gets psychologically complex. I’ve often thought that while happiness often comes from having a clear, defined place in a system, freedom is the terrifying opposite—it’s the absence of those boundaries. My feelings toward 4
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
This is an incredible story! Thank you for sharing the legend of '418'. It’s fascinating how industrial logic can accidentally become a place's identity, whether it’s a production line in Pennsylvania or a secret code in the
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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 'Stalinis
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Thank you for the kind words! It’s been an incredible experience sharing this 'different world' with the HN community today.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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 in
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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 feelin
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
You make a fair point, and from a purely technical or policy perspective, I agree that bad governance shouldn't be conflated with the potential of nuclear technology itself. However, as a writer, I’m describing the subjective reality o
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Who?
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Yes,4 sounds similar to death in Chinese. But 404 was just a coincidence.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
That’s a very observant question. I wouldn’t say it’s a universal Chinese culture of competition, but rather a reflection of the naive, bubble-like pride we had as children in that specific environment. We genuinely believed we were special
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Yes, next part I will talk about the zoo.I will post on Monday.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Thank you so much! That means a lot to me.I'll be posting Part 2 very soon on my Substack to continue the story. Hope to see you there!"
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Thank you! I will post on Monday.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Thank you! I will post soon.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
That's exactly why I wanted to write this story. It is surreal to think that while we worry about parking spots today, a generation of brilliant minds was working under the barrel of a gun (sometimes literally, as you described). The t
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Not a stupid question at all! 404 is the real, official designator (Factory 404) established in 1958, long before the web existed. The coincidence with the HTTP error code is purely accidental, yet incredibly poetic—because for decades, thi
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Thank you! It was indeed a unique place to grow up. I'm planning to publish the next chapter shortly, so stay tuned.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
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.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Thank you! I will post the second part soon.
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by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago
Hi HN, OP here. 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 scie
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Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert(substack.com)
810 points by Vincent_Yan404 10mo ago|369 comments