How Did China's Smallest City in Shanxi Give Birth to the Universe-Level Epic The Three-Body Problem?

Interestingly, the source of inspiration for this feast of imagination is not a futuristic city filled with sci-fi vibes, but the hometown of Liu Cixin, author of *The Three-Body Problem*—a hardcore heavy industrial city—

Where exactly is Yangquan? This understated city in Shanxi is actually hidden beneath the core premise of Liu Cixin’s other classic, *The Wandering Earth*—the "Earth Engines"—

“We first saw the Earth Engines up close near the Taihang Mountain exit outside Shijiazhuang. It was a towering metal mountain, looming before us, occupying half the sky. Compared to it, the Taihang Mountain range to the west looked like a string of small hills.”

Yangquan lies in the Taihang and Xizhou Mountains, part of that “string of small hills.” The towering Taihang Mountains, with their 200-kilometer stretch, separate the vastly different cities of Shijiazhuang, Hebei’s capital, and Taiyuan, Shanxi’s capital. Yangquan is the “mountain apart” between them.

Mountains are the key to understanding Yangquan. Hills and mountains dominate its landscape. With barren land and a cold climate, it’s unsuitable for agriculture or dense populations, making it Shanxi’s smallest and least populous prefecture-level city.

The Niangzi Pass guards the Jingxing, one of the “Eight Passes of Taihang,” a vital route connecting the Loess Plateau and the North China Plain since ancient times. The Guguang Great Wall, built by the Bai Di regime’s Zhongshan State, still stands after millennia. The towering Shinao Mountain, overlooking the city, became the main battleground of the Hundred Regiments Offensive, etching a revolutionary epic.

The mountains also make Yangquan a secluded retreat. As the saying goes, “For above-ground relics, look to Shanxi.” Yangquan boasts ancient treasures like the earliest surviving wooden Guanwang Temple, Yuan-era temples such as Yubei’s Taishan Temple and Machiyan Temple, and the Jin-dynasty Guanshan Academy. Compared to sci-fi writers, enlightened monks seem more fitting here.

Yet beneath Yangquan’s mountains lies another world. The city sits atop the northeastern Qinshui Coalfield, with coal reserves of 10 billion tons, mostly high-quality, low-ash anthracite. As early as 1906, Shanxi’s first railway passed through Yangquan, and a modern coal mine was established in 1907—putting Yangquan ahead of its time.

After the First Five-Year Plan, Yangquan became China’s largest anthracite production base and a key energy-chemical hub, powering Hebei and Beijing. Freight trains even ran directly to Shanghai, trading coal for daily goods, earning it the nickname “Little Shanghai of Shanxi.”

This unassuming Taihang town lit up North China, becoming an artery for national industrial development. Doesn’t that already have a sci-fi “vibe”?

Today, Yangquan’s urban districts remain named “Urban Area,” “Mining Area,” and “Suburban Area”—clear relics of the industrial era. Its heavy industry drew worker families from across China (including Liu Cixin’s, who survived the 1942 famine, worked as a Beijing official, and was later assigned to Yangquan). Like his characters, they bore the collectivist era’s stamp but lacked strong regional identity. As Liu once told Lu Yu: “Do you see yourself as a Beijinger or a Shanxi native?” He replied, “I think I’m an Earthling.”

To another Chinese sci-fi writer, Han Song, the Yangquan-Niangzi Pass corridor brimmed with the clamor of industry: “Freight trucks—hauling coal, flammable chemicals—rumbled past like prehistoric beasts.” Perhaps *The Wandering Earth*’s opening scene, where trucks hollow Taihang to power Earth with fusion, mirrors Yangquan’s coal-and-steel industrial surge.

Thus, Yangquan folds disparate lifestyles. Jin cuisine staples like *piaomianqu* and *hudu*, the Shanxi-highland favorite *guoyourou*, and the state-factory-era Weierkang soda remain local delights.

Yangquan is where Liu Cixin’s dazzling sci-fi meets the soot-streaked reality.

On August 23, 2015, an astronaut aboard the ISS announced globally that Liu Cixin had won the Hugo Award for *The Three-Body Problem*. At that moment, Liu was driving down a muddy road in Yangquan. Small town and grand fantasy linked in a fittingly sci-fi way—all originating from an even smaller place: Niangzi Pass.

To most Chinese, Niangzi Pass is a historic symbol. To sci-fi fans, it’s legendary. Take *The Wandering Earth 2*, which distilled Liu’s ideas: the *Three-Body*-inspired “space elevator,” *The Devourer*’s moon-bombing audacity, and *Mirror*’s future-predicting AI “MOSS”—all born in Niangzi Pass.

Beyond its strategic might, Niangzi Pass housed a power plant built in 1965. Tucked in the mountains, it was once North China’s grid hub, supplying Shanxi, Hebei, and Beijing.

Thus, the plant offered cushy living, easy coal transport, and Shanxi’s earliest internet. For Liu, the low-key computer engineer who believed in “hiding behind his work,” the tranquil, low-pressure Niangzi Pass was ideal—so much so that slacking birthed a sci-fi era:

“Everyone sat at computers; no one knew what others were doing. Buy a crappy LCD screen that blanks at an angle, and you could write while ‘working.’ It felt like cheating.”

Niangzi Pass is tiny, but Liu’s vision was vast. In this transcendent yet unisolated “Red Coast Base,” “the kite of sci-fi still soars high, but its string is tethered to solid ground.”

However, with Yangquan's economic transformation, the Niangzi Guan Thermal Power Plant gradually shut down starting in 2007, placing immense psychological pressure on Liu Cixin. This marked a turning point around 2008 in his works—shifting from exploring humanity and nature to conducting "complex experiments in extreme social environments." The Earthlings in *The Three-Body Problem*, flattened into "holographic photos" by dimensional strikes, would never imagine that the destruction of the universe originated from the shutdown of a real-world power plant.

The power plant closed, but a sci-fi universe was unexpectedly born. Even Yangquan's New Year lanterns are now filled with space-themed elements. If sci-fi fans visit the Niangzi Guan Power Plant, they’ll witness a surreal scene—no more billowing black smoke, replaced by nearly 1,400 square meters of murals on its exterior walls, including a classic scene from *The Wandering Earth* where planetary engines propel the "little broken planet" into space. A walk through it feels like flipping through a "minimalist artbook of the Liu Cixin Universe."

When the phrase "Give civilization to the years, not years to civilization" was inscribed on the plant’s outer wall, this unassuming heavy-industrial city seemed to gain a touch of sci-fi texture.

Enduring the blood and sweat of workers in *Of Ants and Dinosaurs*;

Here, awakening amid revolution and war,

Hiding the dream of a powerful nation from *Ball Lightning*;

Here lies China’s most critical energy lifeline,

Giving birth to *The Wandering Earth*’s vision of uniting global forces to break into the cosmos.

Industrialization, for over a century, has been a future pursued by the Chinese through blood, sacrifice, and detours—and Yangquan’s history condenses it all.

Liu Cixin’s emergence from Yangquan is an exception, but China’s tortuous modernization producing a Liu Cixin is an inevitability.

As Han Song wrote in *Passing by the Sci-Fi Holy Land: Niangzi Guan*: "The moment I crossed Niangzi Guan, I finally understood—fantasy springs from barrenness, pain, and the chase."

"I still want to write sci-fi that excites me" — Interview with Liu Cixin by Wang Yao

*Return to Eden—A Decade of Sci-Fi Creation in Review* by Liu Cixin

*A Study of Ecological Consciousness in Liu Cixin’s Sci-Fi Works* by Yan Su