My name is Li Yang, I was born on April 4, today, you go online to open the web page when you see 404, is telling you that the page can not be found.
But 404 is also a code name of a prefecture-level city, it only has a code name, not a name.
Whether on publicly available paper maps, electronic maps, city listings, license plate numbers, phone area codes, or on the Taobao deliverable city list, you can’t find the city of 404 where I was born.
Like other cities, 404 has a public prosecutor, a land office, a social security bureau, a television station, a newspaper, and every administrative agency you can think of.
Unlike other cities, the city is only 4 square kilometers from the outermost part of the city, and people live in an area of no more than 2 square kilometers.
But this pitifully small city is where China’s first military nuclear reactor was built.
You can’t find it because it was the place where China built the atomic bomb, which is now largely abandoned.
404 workers posing under the statue of Chairman Mao during the Cultural Revolution
This was the starting point of the Chinese Communist Party’s nuclear industry. When the atomic bombs were being researched, these places were top secret and were not marked on any maps, and were called “XX mining area”, so the people around here naturally thought this was where the country was digging.
Once the most lively staff club, now turned into the history of 404 exhibition hall
404 emphasizes the spirit of the nuclear industry: the cause above all responsibility is more important than all strict and meticulous integration into all enterprising achievements. At the same time, it is also necessary to “dedicate life after youth, dedicate life to children and grandchildren.”
The family posed for a photo in front of Chairman Mao’s statue, and the father was wearing 404’s work uniform
404 looks like an ordinary small city in the north, with parks, lakes and rockeries, but you wouldn’t expect it to be a city in the desert – because it was all built brick by brick!
From 1958, the country’s best workers, model workers transferred over, where the collection of high people from all walks of life, not only nuclear experts, Shanghai Guangsheng Garden’s most bullish top chefs, excellent salesmen on Nanjing Road, the best mechanics around …… all transferred to 404.
In addition to the surface of the drinking water project (water is drawn from the Qilian Mountains), there is a whole set of underground nuclear base, only you can not see, that is all my grandfather and father that two generations planted trees, digging ditches, building buildings, built the atomic bomb.
Therefore, we usually call ourselves a nuclear city, and we all have one goal: to raise the whole country to build the atomic bomb.
Although 404 is small, but the facilities are quite complete, the most important thing is that we really implement the slogan of “do-it-yourself food and clothing”, in its heyday, not to mention the atomic bomb factory, 404 even has a vinegar factory, in the vast desert, the people of this city can drink their own vinegar, eat their own popsicles and ice cream.
We also built our own park, which has a decommissioned fighter jet, a flowing rockery, and five cages: the first cage for bears, the second for birds, the third for monkeys, the fourth for peacocks, the fifth for deer …… also transferred animals from other places, rotating for us to see.
404 at that time only the nuclear city park a “scenic area”, there is a zoo, so outside the relatives and friends will bring it to the nuclear city park to visit and play, take a stroll 404 of this “famous scenic spot”.
The gate of Nucleus City Park today
The airplane in Nucleus City Park. People from all over the city took souvenir pictures with this plane.
My mother took a picture with the plane in Nuclear City Park, she devoted her life to it.
This was the only ride in the park, but it was out of service for a short time. I have never ridden it, it has been out of service for as long as I can remember. I heard from adults that there was a safety problem one year and there were casualties, so it was discontinued and became an ornament.
My father took me for a group photo in front of the amusement machine in Nuclear City Park.
404 has a slogan, called “dedicated to life after youth, dedicated to life dedicated to children and grandchildren”, they stay for three generations, I am the third generation.
In September 2014, when I returned to 404 for filming, I found an abandoned “plutonium manual” lying in front of the bath. (This is a common 404 workbook)
Plutonium is a radioactive element and an important raw material for the atomic energy industry, used as nuclear fuel and as a fissile agent for nuclear weapons. The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki City used plutonium to make the core part.
404 Every day is windy
There is no windy day here. When the wind is strong, we have to wear helmets, because rocks with a diameter of three or four centimeters can blow up in the sky, just like gunfire, and the environment is very harsh.
And 404 usually all sunny days, the hot sun shining on the Gobi Desert, a cloudy day, we are in a good mood.
This is my elementary school classroom, my mother and I went to elementary school in the same classroom
We had two elementary schools, each with two classes of about 30 students. We all knew each other, from kindergarten to elementary school, to middle school and high school. Our elders have known each other since our grandparents’ generation. Our parents were hairy children who grew up here together, and our generation of children grew up together, so we are especially close, like brothers.
When we buy new clothes for New Year’s Eve, the 404 city kids rent a van and the driver drives 100 kilometers to take us to the nearest city. My mom gave me 100 yuan, my dad then secretly stuffed me with 20, a total of 120 yuan. We ran to the place, spend 2 yuan to buy a bowl of noodles to eat, and then buy a new clothes home, even if the New Year.
This is the only time in a year. Outside the world of children, growing up playing Transformers, playing CDs, models, go to the Children’s Palace …… I have not experienced such things.
So how do we usually play?
We all find a place at night, baked potatoes, look at the stars, buy some beer to sit on the side of the road to drink.
For a while, 404 and roller rink, there are many girls, but not many beautiful, and beautiful girls we all like, for this reason, we always fight.
Because 404 is isolated from the world, people are stupid, so the children fight are also extra hard.
But do not look at the place is small, this place is a prison, a small city has this kind of function is not a little scary?
Don’t forget that 404 is a special city with its own jail and intermediate court, and that’s not something that a normal place can do. This is a place with laws, that prison is particularly small, about two houses, my hair fights have squatted in jail.
The key is the prison guard, maybe it is your uncle, you know what this means, right? We are all too familiar, just we are not the same occupation, but we are all too familiar.
But something serious has happened, in junior high school, an old man opened a billiard room, we play billiards, it involves winning and losing, involving money.
A friend of mine back some accounts (in fact, today think about it is only a few dozen dollars), he can not afford to pay this money, the old man of the pool room will always go to the school gate block him, and he said you do not pay back the money, I told your teacher, I call the police, do not let you study, so you have no future in life.
As a result, this friend with an axe to knock on the door of the old man billiards room, he knows where the old man lives, 404 is particularly small, there is no privacy in this place.
Once the old man opened the door, he split the old man to death, after the split, invited his friend to eat a meal and said, “I’m leaving, you guys have a good time.” And he took the train and left. Not even a few dozen kilometers, and was caught back.
I remember this incident particularly well, because I saw his execution with my own eyes.
There was an intermediate court in 404, and his case was on public trial in the city center, and everyone was listening at the bottom when they heard the judge shout, “Death penalty, immediate execution!”
Then there were two armed police carrying submachine guns, wearing blindfolds and masks, escorted him out and set him up in the back of a Dongfeng truck, with a sign stuck in the back of his neck, and that was in the 1990s, when 404’s public trials and executions still had signs stuck in their backs.
We children followed on bicycles, the car has been driving out of town, driving to the Gobi (404 only one main road, this main road is only two or three hundred meters), but I was curious and afraid to look, followed all the way on bicycles, bicycles did not Dongfeng drive fast, did not ride to, you heard the gunshots.
Execution of prisoners on the Gobi Beach, not far from the two trees in the last photo I took, after the execution, the executioner immediately left, driving back the same way, rushing us head-on boom away.
We hadn’t ridden to the place, we smelled a particularly strong smell of alcohol, the original kill the condemned, is to spill sorghum wine. I do not know why, adults say it is to ward off evil spirits, and to bring down the fishy smell of the killing site, the whole Gobi Beach is full of the smell of white wine.
What if the children can not stand the loneliness of 404?
Only test out.
But 404 is too isolated, no one wants to come over to teach. My English teacher is a junior college graduate, did not go to high school. On the word “as”, I went to college to know, that read “AIDS”, not “uh silk”, our teacher taught us to read for three years in high school ” Uhs.”
However, 404 has a higher political status than the average city, and it has its own college entrance exams and its own admissions office.
Beijing’s college entrance exam may have 100,000 people, but our admissions office, each session of the college entrance exam only 70 to 80 people, if the file, the director of the recruitment office on the spot to help you call, ask if you are willing to go to schools that do not recruit enough to give you a replacement, basically everyone can be taken care of.
404 buried several generations of blood and youth
China to build the atomic bomb, 404 gathered the country’s technical experts, this is not bragging, the manufacture of atomic bombs need to be highly skilled mechanical processing technology, which depends on the ability to do.
Later I read public reports, there is a master called “original three knives”, to do the core components of the atomic bomb depends on him, cut three knives out, no difference.
There are many such capable people in 404, but they are almost all dead and buried in the desert today.
For the sake of the country, there are many such places in China, in the deep forests, the desert Gobi, there are many mysterious units, write to receive letters without an address, only a code.
Many people are buried there in this life, in obscurity, no one knows that there was such a person.
For these people who came here to engage in production and construction, the state built a city of tens of thousands of people. Because every person who came down to work in the factory needed hospitals, schools, housing, land, planning, and administration to serve him. All these units together, there have to be 10 people who serve – and it’s not called service, there are leaders in it – that’s the people who manage him. In other words, there has to be someone to build him a house, someone to see him, someone to give him a house, and someone to administratively control him.
So it is a small society though, and there are as many upper, middle and lower levels of society. In addition to the upper leadership, middle-level technical backbone and workers, although they say that the glorious dedication to the country, in fact, after that aura faded, people still want to leave this place, where the conditions are after all too hard.
During the shooting, I returned to the mountain bungalow area, at this time all bungalows have been completely dismantled, I saw an old man scavenging after smashing demolition not transported away construction waste, he smashed it to pieces and took out the steel inside to sell money. He was standing on the pile of construction debris that had once been my home.
The Soviets knew about 404, and the Americans must have known about it. 404, the city was built with the danger of nuclear war in mind, so it had a complete defense system underground.
The entire city of 404 is empty underground, from the production area to the living area, each neighborhood school entrance all have tunnels, when we were young, playing adventure games, is into the tunnels to explore, those tunnels have nuclear bomb-proof half-foot-thick stone door, there are small storage room inside, we went in when it was abandoned.
Between 1968 and 1969, there was a local war between China and the Soviet Union on Jumbo Island, and the Soviets declared internationally that they would perform a surgical operation on the Chinese nuclear base.
The Soviet Union is the only country in the world that has a nuclear base.
At that time my mother 4th grade, every day have to carry dry food bags to school, dry food bags of fried noodles, steamed buns and other dry food, often in class, the alarm went off, the teacher students to the bunker, that is, the tunnels run inside.
At that time, the glass of every house was required to be taped with paper strips in the shape of “rice” to prevent the glass from shattering and injuring people after an air raid, and this situation lasted for about two years.
In fact, in the event of a nuclear war, it would be useless to put strips of paper on windows.
But because a nuclear-armed China had a hold on the Soviet Union, the U.S. chose to side with China this time: on October 15, 1969, Nixon said through Kissinger that “if China is hit by a nuclear strike, they will consider it the beginning of World War III, and they will be the first to go to war”. Only then did the Soviet Union not hit 404.
The 404 was born in the Cold War and was almost destroyed in the Cold War.
The Cold War sounds far away, but it was actually relevant to each of us at the time, and it was a matter of life and death.
In September 2014 my father accompanied me to 404 for a photo shoot, and several of the signs behind him were units he had worked in, which now no longer exist as 404 moves and reorganizes its businesses.
My father picked up these plaques that were scattered all over the place while I was taking pictures and asked me to take a picture of him with them. The building behind him is where these units used to be and where he used to work. I wonder if he will have mixed feelings when he looks at these photos again.
Gobi Beach, climbing up the rockery in Nuclear City Park, behind which is the endless Gobi Beach, 404 is located in this natural environment. Following the direction of the two trees in the picture, in the distance is 404’s “torture chamber”, where my childhood friend was shot for murder.
After the end of the Cold War, the world entered the track of rapid economic development, 404 still lives in isolation and has no relationship with the changes in the world.
A past that can never be returned
Later, the underground of 404 began to collapse, overnight, the school, the entire stadium collapsed. As soon as the state knew the situation, immediately allocated funds to choose a site to move.
How to move?
Get the army!
Each family arranged a military truck, make arrangements for deployment, the troops to carry things for you, you just need to pack up on the line, the moving company is the army. 80 military trucks per day, 3 times a day, 240 households moved every day. Moved for six months.
As a result, this thing was discovered by the United States, and the United States had spies come over: is there a large-scale military operation in China? Actually, we were the ones who were moving, moving for six months.
When we moved, I was in college and not in the area. The last time I went home, our whole family was still there, and when I went back next time, it was in ruins.
I am not familiar with the city where I moved to, 404 people are too stupid to move to the past, although the place is remote, but actually prices are not high, 404 prices are high. So after the old ladies moved over, once they got to the market, they said how this steamed bun is only 30 cents, we have 50 cents there, and the next day, the market all went up to 50 cents.
404 The city was built up by administrative order. The part I photographed is the living area of a professional production base. It is not a society that grows out of a normal city, but an artificially built unit and society within four square kilometers.
So, when I came to Beijing, I was so different from other kids from other places. In fact, I never entered mainstream Chinese society.
404 was too small, no buses, no cabs. After I got out of 404, I didn’t know how to take the bus, and I didn’t understand that I had to buy a ticket. I just observed and watched how others took the bus.
But now I think back on this, even now, the good effect on me is that I remain curious about everything. Because I had never seen anything before, I was curious about everything after I came out.
It’s strange to say that now, we 404 third-generation people grow up. And then back to that place, think how we can stay in this place for so many years? And at that time did not feel bored at all.
Children can play with ants all afternoon, but how did those adults come? I can’t understand how they stayed there for the rest of their lives.
There was just one main street, and every day after dinner, all the people in the city ran to the main street to walk and greet under the statue of Chairman Mao.
The city’s various types of workers, judges of the prosecutor’s office, leaders of the Public Security Bureau, bad boys who fight, all walk together in harmony. We all go to work together, after work together, all know each other, even the divorce rate is low. There is no way to cheat, you divorced what to do? Still together every day.
If we didn’t move to the nearby downtown area, we wouldn’t even be able to use Taobao. 404 is as big as a neighborhood in Beijing today, and for 50 years, three generations, stuck in this part of the desert.
In September 2014, when I went back to 404 and took these photos, my ID card was already from Beijing, so I was treated as an outsider when I entered 404, and I had to elaborate on my reasons for entering 404. This shows that 404 is a city of secrecy, so 404 has also been unknown to people.
Today, because 404 relocated and various units have been reorganized or reformed, people have gone and the city no longer exists.
404 was able to unveil its mysterious veil to show in front of everyone.
With the relocation and abandonment of 404, that city also buried several generations of China’s youth and blood.
This is one of the most mysterious cities in China, it has no name, only the code name, it is called 404.
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