Editor’s note

编辑说明

This reported narrative treats Project 816 as both an industrial ruin and a living social system. Built for a future that never arrived, the site is read through field visits and oral histories: not to romanticize “secrecy,” but to track how a cancelled mission still organizes memory, labor, and local life decades later.

这篇报道把816既当作一处工业遗址，也当作一个仍在运转的社会系统来阅读。 通过实地走访与口述访谈，我试图追踪：当一项被取消的使命不再指向未来，它如何在更漫长的时间里继续组织人的劳动、记忆与地方生活—— 既不浪漫化“保密”，也不把它简化为猎奇。

Key questions

核心问题框架

• How did a town become a “missing coordinate”—a place known only by a mailbox code?
• What does it mean to build a national project that will never be used?
• How did secrecy, discipline, and migration remake lives across generations?
• When an unfinished mega-project becomes a tourist site, what is remembered—and what is misread?

• 一座小镇如何成为“消失的坐标”——只以信箱代号存在于文件与记忆中？
• 当一个国家工程注定不会启用，参与者的意义从何处安放？
• 保密纪律、迁徙与集体生活，如何重塑几代人的人生轨迹？
• 当未竟工程变成旅游景区，哪些记忆被重建，哪些又被误读？

Selected excerpts

文章节选

Lost History: The Secret of Baitao Town

遗失的历史：白涛镇的秘密

我对涪陵的最初印象，来自何伟的《江城》。1996年8月，他从重庆乘慢船顺江而下，进入川东深处的这座小城。20世纪90年代的涪陵，正如他所说：“公路非常糟糕。去哪里你都得坐船，但多半你哪里也不会去。”那时，这座城市多年来都不曾对外国人开放，何伟自己也不清楚，一个美国人生活在这里，对当地人而言意味着什么。但他了解到，五六十年代，美国的核威胁促使毛泽东将兵工厂迁往西南偏远的山岭之中，而涪陵，就是其中之一。 现在回想，这种封闭和隔绝，或许不仅仅是地理上的。比起涪陵，我即将前往的白涛镇更加隐秘，它甚至一度消失在了地图上。几十年来，这个名字被代号取代，在信件、文件、人员调动记录中，它只被称为“重庆4513信箱”。虽然1984年816工程停建后，这里不再是禁区，但它的过往与位置，直到2002年工程被解密，才真正浮出历史的水面。

My first impression of Fuling came from Peter Hessler’s River Town. In August 1996, he took a slow boat from Chongqing downriver into this small city in eastern Sichuan. Fuling in the 1990s, as he wrote, had “terrible roads. To go anywhere you had to take a boat—and most likely you wouldn’t go anywhere at all.” For years the city had not been open to foreigners; Hessler himself did not know what it meant to local people that an American was living there. Yet he learned that in the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. nuclear threats pushed Mao Zedong to relocate armament factories into the remote mountains of the Southwest—and Fuling was one of them. Looking back now, that sense of closure and isolation may not have been merely geographic. Compared with Fuling, the town I was heading to—Baitao—was even more hidden; for a time it virtually disappeared from maps. For decades, its name was replaced by a code. In letters, documents, and personnel-transfer records, it was known only as “Chongqing P.O. Box 4513.” Although Project 816 was halted in 1984 and the area was no longer a forbidden zone, its past and its location did not truly surface until the project was declassified in 2002.

Lost History: The Turning Point in 1982

遗失的历史：1982年的转折

那一天的细节，78岁的范成华已经记不清了，只记得那是个寻常的上午，厂里依旧忙碌，工人们和工程师们各司其职。接到通知时，范成华并未多想，像以往一样走进小礼堂，以为这只是一次普通的会议。但当他推开礼堂的大门，迎面而来的是不同寻常的场景——480人的会场已是座无虚席，各个部门的职工代表悉数到场，似乎比往常任何一次都要严肃。 很快，那位局长站上讲台，正式宣布了国家的决定：由于国际局势的变化和国家经济建设的需要，816工程暂停建设，工厂将实行“军转民”，所有后续发展都需自筹自负。消息一出，台下一片哗然。这一决定，让这座曾经隐匿在山中的庞大工程，骤然失去了它的使命。

Fan Chenghua, now seventy-eight, no longer remembers the details of that day. He recalls only an ordinary morning: the plant was busy as usual, workers and engineers at their posts. When he received the notice, he gave it no special thought—he walked into the small auditorium as he always did, assuming it was a routine meeting. But when he pushed open the doors, he was met by an unusual scene: the hall, built for 480 people, was packed; employee representatives from every department were present, and the air felt more solemn than any meeting before. Soon the bureau chief stepped onto the stage and announced the state’s decision: because of changes in the international situation and the needs of national economic development, Project 816 would be suspended. The factory would undergo “military-to-civilian conversion,” and all future development would have to be self-financed and self-sustaining. The hall erupted. With that decision, the colossal project hidden in the mountains abruptly lost its mission.

Division 54: A Hidden Hero Unit

54师，隐匿的英雄部队

“进洞就像上战场，要有牺牲准备。”陈怀文回忆，地下水和塌方是最大威胁。风钻打到一定深度，突然钻头一空，下面是涌动的地下水，而头顶则可能瞬间坍塌。一次，他们遇到了溶洞，岩层不断崩裂，积水迅速上涨，所有人被困黑暗中。为稳住地基，他们用木料填塞水沟，再用水泥、钢筋加固，确保后续施工。许多时候，施工队只能凭经验判断何时撤离，但危险往往来得更快。

“Entering the tunnels was like going to war—you had to be prepared to die,” Chen Huaiwen recalled. Groundwater and cave-ins were the greatest threats. When the pneumatic drill reached a certain depth, the bit might suddenly drop into empty space: surging groundwater below, and the roof above could collapse in an instant. Once they hit a karst cavity; the rock kept cracking, the water rose fast, and everyone was trapped in darkness. To stabilize the foundation they stuffed channels with timber, then reinforced them with cement and rebar to ensure construction could continue. Often the crew could only rely on experience to decide when to pull back—but danger usually arrived faster.

The Unfinished Computer and the Lost Underground Factory

未竟的计算机和失落的地下核工厂

1978年，孙国光随设备返回816厂。但她惊讶地发现，洞体根本容不下这台设备——主控室早已安装完毕，是按照404厂的老系统设计的，根本没有预留空间。最终，这台设备只能安置在洞外的红楼。因为这台计算机的抗干扰能力非常差，红楼专门铺设了木地板，还安装了中央空调，并需要频繁维护。按计划，计算机将在外部试运行，待一切稳定后再搬入816洞体，正式用于核反应堆的监测和控制。然而，它试运行了几年，始终未能搬入洞体，最终彻底闲置。

In 1978, Sun Guoguang returned to Factory 816 with the equipment. To her surprise, the underground complex could not accommodate it at all: the main control room had already been installed, designed according to the old system from Factory 404, with no space reserved. In the end, the machine could only be placed in the “Red Building” outside the tunnels. Because the computer was highly vulnerable to interference, the building was fitted with wooden floors and central air-conditioning and required frequent maintenance. The plan was to run it on a trial basis outside first, then move it into the underground complex once everything stabilized, where it would monitor and control the reactor. But after years of trial operation, it was never moved inside—and eventually fell completely idle.

Ruins Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Memory

废墟美学与记忆的重建

816工程成了一座遗址。陈怀文积极参与景区建设，希望让人们了解54师的故事，知道他们的付出并非“白干了”，也并不“傻”。“在那个冷战年代，816工程是国家的战略选择。正是因为有这些备战工程，战争才没有发生。”他相信，816工程未曾运转，但它的存在，已改变了历史的走向。■

Project 816 became a site—an industrial relic. Chen Huaiwen took an active role in building the tourist area, hoping people would understand the story of Division 54 and see that their labor was not “for nothing,” nor were they “foolish.” “In that Cold War era, Project 816 was a strategic choice of the state. It was precisely because such war-preparation projects existed that war did not happen,” he said. He believes that although Project 816 never ran, its existence nonetheless altered the course of history. ■