Why did the smallest city in Shanxi give birth to the cosmic-level “Three Body”?

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This article introduces how the small city of Yangquan, Shanxi, gave birth to the cosmic-level science fiction work “Three Body”. Starting from the city’s geographical location and historical background, the article explores the relationship between Yangquan as a heavy industrial city and science fiction creation, as well as the importance of Niangziguan Town in Liu Cixin’s works.

• 🌌 As the smallest city in Shanxi, Yangquan gave birth to the cosmic-level science fiction work “Three Body”.

• 🏭 Yangquan’s heavy industrial background provided inspiration for science fiction creation and became the creative base for Liu Cixin’s works.

• 🖥️ As an important element in Liu Cixin’s works, Niangziguan Town shapes his science fiction universe.

March this year is another science fiction hot month. First, there was the sci-fi version of “Dune 2”, the revenge story of a prince, which shocked people with its grand special effects; then there was the Netflix version of “The Three-Body Problem” film and television drama, which was full of controversy, giving fans of the original work and the domestic “Three-Body Problem” film and television drama a little “adaptation is not the little shock of making it up.

Facing the protagonists such as Wang Miao and Da Shi who suffered “magic changes” in the Netflix version of “The Three-Body Problem”, we might as well review the original work of “The Three-Body Problem” and the domestically produced “Three-Body Problem” films and TV shows that have been well-received for their faithful restoration and reasonable adaptation. drama. From “Human Computer” to “The Whole Universe Flashes for You” to “Operation Guzheng” with full special effects, they all tell us what the charm of science fiction is.

Interestingly, the source of inspiration for this series of imaginative feasts is not a futuristic city full of science fiction, but the hometown of Liu Cixin, the author of “The Three-Body Problem”, a hard-core heavy industrial city: Yangquan, Shanxi.

Overlooking Yangquan from Shi Nao Mountain. Photography/Zhao Jun

1. Yangquan itself is very science fiction?

Yangquan, where is it? This most low-key city in Shanxi is actually hidden under the core setting of the “Earth Engine” at the beginning of another classic novel “The Wandering Earth” by Liu Cixin:

“We first saw the Earth Engine at close range. We saw it at the exit of the Taihang Mountains near Shijiazhuang. It was a metal mountain that towered in front of us, occupying half of the sky. Compared with it, the mountains to the west were The Taihang Mountains are like a series of small mounds.”

Yangquan is located in the Taihang Mountains and Xizhoushan Mountains in this series of “small mounds”. The towering Taihang Mountains separate two very different cities, Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province, and Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, with 200 kilometers of mountain roads. Yangquan is the “separation of a mountain” between the two cities.

Yangquan is hidden in the Taihang Mountains. Cartography/Sun Lu

Mountains are the password to understand Yangquan. Mountains and hills account for an absolute proportion of Yangquan’s area. The land here is barren and the climate is cold, making it unsuitable for agricultural production and population gathering. It is the smallest prefecture-level city in Shanxi Province with the smallest population.

Niangziguan is guarded on Jingxing, one of the “Eight Passes of Taihang”. It has been an important passage connecting the Loess Plateau and the North China Plain since ancient times; the Guguan Great Wall built by the Zhongshan Kingdom during the Bai Di regime has also survived for thousands of years. Shinao Mountain, overlooking the city, became the main battlefield of the Hundred Regiments War, recording its historic epic.

At the foot of the Guguan Great Wall is the first expressway in Shanxi. Photography/Saudi Cowboy

The mountains also make Yangquan a secret place to escape from the world. As the saying goes, “See Shanxi for its above-ground cultural relics.” There are many natural monuments in Yangquan, Shanxi, such as the Guanwang Temple, the earliest existing wooden structure; temples built in the Yuan Dynasty such as Taishan Temple in Yubei and Majiyan Temple; there are still some temples built in the Jin Dynasty. Guanshan Academy compared with science fiction writers, the emergence of enlightened monks seems to be more in line with the setting here.

However, at the foot of Yangquan Mountain, it’s a different scene. The entire city of Yangquan covers the northeastern part of the Qinshui Coalfield, with coal reserves of up to 10 billion tons, mainly high-quality low-ash anthracite. As early as 1906, Shanxi’s first railway passed through Yangquan. In 1907, a modern coal mine was established. At this time, Yangquan was already ahead of its times.

After the “First Five-Year Plan”, Yangquan has become the country’s largest anthracite production base and an important energy and chemical industry base, and is responsible for the power supply of Hebei and Beijing. There was also a fleet of trucks that went directly to Shanghai, and a truckload of coal was exchanged for daily necessities in Shanghai. It was once known as “Shanxi Little Shanghai”.

This low-key town in the Taihang Mountains has lit up the whole of North China and has become an artery that supports the country’s industrial development. Doesn’t it already have the “internal flavor” of science fiction?

To this day, the administrative divisions of the main urban area of Yangquan are still urban areas, mining areas, and suburbs. At a glance, you can tell that they are a legacy of the industrial era. Yangquan’s heavy industry has attracted workers’ families from all over the world (including Liu Cixin’s family, who experienced the 1942 famine, worked as a cadre in Beijing, and was eventually transferred to Yangquan) . Like the characters in Liu Cixin’s works, they have distinctive characteristics of the collectivist era without much regional characteristics. Just like in an interview, Lu Yu asked Liu Cixin: “Do you think you are from Beijing or Shanxi?” Liu Cixin replied: “I think I am from Earth.”

In the eyes of Han Song, another Chinese science fiction writer, the line from Yangquan to Niangziguan is full of a grand scene of “the noisy era and the busy creation”: “There are cargo trucks along the way, many of them transporting coal, which is flammable and explosive.” Chemical supplies, like prehistoric behemoths, are rushing past.” Perhaps, at the beginning of the movie “The Wandering Earth 1”, the classic scene of countless trucks hollowing out the Taihang Mountains and using heavy element fusion to propel the earth is a reflection of Yangquan people’s involvement in the coal and iron heavy industry. A microcosm of the industrial torrent of new China.

The industrial site of Yangquan Water Pump Factory is now the “Yangquan Memory 1947” cultural park. Photography/Saudi Cowboy

Therefore, Yangquan folds different lifestyles. Representatives of Jin cuisine such as Piaopiqu and Ludu, oily meat widely popular in the mountainous areas of Shanxi, and Weilkang soda, which is full of characteristics of the food factory affiliated with the state-owned factory, are still favorites of Yangquan people today.

Yangquan is the connection point where Liu Cixin’s bizarre science fiction world meets the soot-filled real life.

2. How does Niangziguan shape Liu Cixin’s science fiction universe?

On August 23, 2015, an astronaut announced to the world via video link from the International Space Station that Chinese writer Liu Cixin won the Hugo Award for his science fiction novel “The Three-Body Problem”. At that time, Liu Cixin was driving on a muddy road in Yangquan, Shanxi, a small town where he lived. Small places and big fantasies are connected in a very “sci-fi” way, and the origin of it all begins in Niangziguan Town, which is smaller than Yangquan.

The ninth pass of the Great Wall – Niangzi Pass. Photography/Saudi Cowboy

For most Chinese people, Niangziguan is a famous symbol in history books. For Chinese science fiction fans, Niangziguan is a legend in the science fiction world. Take the movie “The Wandering Earth 2” which brings together the essence of Liu Cixin’s works. Say, the “space elevator” originated from the “Three Body” series, the wild idea of exploding the moon from “Eater”, the artificial intelligence “MOSS” that is quite similar to the superstring computer in “Mirror” that can predict the future… …Most of Liu Cixin’s works in these settings were born in Niangziguan.

Niangziguan is not only the most important pass in the world, but also the Niangziguan Power Plant built in 1965. It is hidden deep in the mountains of the town, but it was once the power hub of North China, playing an important role in ensuring the power supply to Shanxi, Hebei and Beijing.

The cooling tower of Niangziguan Thermal Power Plant is now completely cool. Photography/Saudi Cowboy

Because of this, the living conditions in the factory are very good, and transportation for coal transportation is also very convenient. It is also the first place in Shanxi Province to have the Internet. For Liu Cixin, a computer engineer at a power plant who adheres to the concept of “hiding behind works”, Niangziguan is an ideal environment that is calm, simple and low-pressure, so that he can fish out a new era of Chinese science fiction:

“Everyone sits in front of the computer every day, and no one knows who is sitting there and what they are doing. Buy an LCD screen that is of very poor quality and cannot be seen when you turn it at an angle. You can write while you stick to your post. You There’s a feeling of taking advantage.”

Niangziguan is small, but Liu Cixin’s vision is huge. It is in this detached and unenclosed “Red Bank Base” that “the sci-fi kite is still flying high, but it is tied to the solid earth.”

However, with the economic transformation of Yangquan, the Niangziguan Thermal Power Station was gradually shut down starting in 2007, which put great psychological pressure on Liu Cixin. It also made his works around 2008, starting from the pursuit of man and nature. , moving towards “complex experiments in extreme social environments.” The people on earth who were transformed into “holograms” by dimensionality reduction in “The Three-Body Problem” would never have thought that the destruction of the universe would actually result from the shutdown of a real power plant.

Niangziguan Thermal Power Plant and the Wandering Earth Mural. Photography/Saudi Cowboy

The power plant shuts down, but a science fiction universe is unexpectedly born. Even the Yangquan lanterns during the New Year are full of space elements. And if science fiction fans come to Niangziguan Power Station, they will see a magical sight: the power plant is no longer billowing black smoke, and there are nearly 1,400 square meters of murals on the outer walls, and even the earth engine from the movie “The Wandering Earth” The classic scene that propels the “Little Breaking Ball” into space. Walking around, it feels like you can read a book of “Liu Cixin’s Minimalist Paintings of the Universe”.

When the phrase “Give time to civilization, not civilization to time” is printed on the long wall outside the power plant, this heavy industrial city that is not very sci-fi seems to have a bit more of a sci-fi quality.

A view of Yangquan city from a distance. Photography/Saudi Cowboy

The coal and iron industry arose here,

After experiencing the blood and sweat of the workers in “Fire in the Earth”;

Here awakened to revolution and war,

The desire to become a powerful country is hidden in “Ball Lightning”;

Here is China’s most important energy lifeline,

The idea of ”The Wandering Earth” was born to use the power of the world to break out of the universe.

Industrialization is a future that Chinese people have been striving for for more than a hundred years despite bloodshed, sacrifice, and detours. The history of Yangquan condenses all of this.

I love Yangquan. Photography/Hao Jinhua

The emergence of Liu Cixin in Yangquan is a special case, but it is inevitable for China, which has experienced a tortuous modernization process, to emerge from Liu Cixin.

As Han Song said in “Passing Through Niangzi Pass, the Holy Land of Science Fiction”: “The moment I passed Niangzi Pass, I finally understood that fantasy arises from poverty, pain and pursuit.”

References:

I still want to write science fiction novels that excite me: Interview with writer Liu Cixin Wang Yao

Return to Eden: A Review of Ten Years of Science Fiction Creation by Liu Cixin

Research on ecological consciousness in Liu Cixin’s science fiction novels Yan Su

Source: Huxiu