Why Does The Wandering Earth Have a License Plate Starting With Jin C?

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*The Wandering Earth 2* is undoubtedly the most awe-inspiring cinematic masterpiece of the year.

A space elevator connecting Earth and the Moon, the digital life of seagulls saving the world, building 10,000 engines to push Earth on a 2,500-year journey to find a new home... This is a futuristic epic that only the Chinese could create.

Liu Cixin, the author of *The Wandering Earth*, watched the film twice at his hometown cinema, calling it "a loud whistle for Chinese sci-fi on the world stage." Director Guo Fan had long expressed his desire to "visit the Niangzi Pass Power Plant and see where sci-fi was born."

Fig. 1: Scene of Earth's engines from *The Wandering Earth 1*.

Fig. 2: Space elevator scene from *The Wandering Earth 2*.

Fig. / *The Wandering Earth* 1-2

Interestingly, Liu Cixin's hometown, the cradle of classic sci-fi works like *The Wandering Earth* and *The Three-Body Problem*, is not a futuristic metropolis but a hardcore industrial city—

Where exactly is Yangquan? This understated city in Shanxi is actually hidden beneath the core premise of *The Wandering Earth*'s opening—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."

The Taihang Mountains are not a thin "line" on the land but a thick "layer."

Yangquan is located in the Taihang and Xizhou Mountains, part of this "string of small hills." Cao Cao, who once marched through the Taihang Mountains, lamented, "The winding paths are so treacherous that even cart wheels break." The towering Taihang Mountains, with their 200-kilometer stretch, separate the vastly different cities of Shijiazhuang (Hebei's capital) and Taiyuan (Shanxi's capital), with Yangquan being the "mountain barrier" between them.

Yangquan is hidden within the Taihang Mountains.

Mountains are the key to understanding Yangquan. From the legendary Lone Mountain where the Orphan of Zhao hid to the Mian Mountain where Niangzi Pass stands, hills and mountains dominate Yangquan's landscape. With poor soil and a cold climate, it’s unsuitable for agriculture or large populations, making it Shanxi's smallest and least populous prefecture-level city.

Niangzi Pass guards one of the "Eight Passes of Taihang," the Jingxing Pass, a vital route connecting the Loess Plateau and the North China Plain since ancient times. The Guguang Great Wall, built by the Bai Di state of Zhongshan, has stood for millennia. The towering Shinao Mountain, overlooking the city, became the main battleground of the Hundred Regiments Offensive, marking a revolutionary epic.

Beneath the Guguang Great Wall lies Shanxi's first expressway.

The mountains also make Yangquan a secluded retreat. As the saying goes, "To see ancient relics, look to Shanxi." Yangquan boasts numerous historical sites, such as the earliest surviving wooden Guanwang Temple, the Yuan-era Yubei 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 part of the Qinshui Coalfield, with coal reserves reaching 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—making Yangquan ahead of its time.

Trains carried away Shanxi's coal, fueling China's industrial growth.

After the First Five-Year Plan, Yangquan became the largest anthracite production base and a crucial energy and chemical hub in China, serving as the power supply backbone for Hebei and Beijing. Freight convoys directly transporting coal to Shanghai emerged, exchanging loads of coal for daily necessities from the city, earning Yangquan the nickname "Little Shanghai of Shanxi."

This unassuming small town in the Taihang Mountains illuminated the entire North China region, becoming a vital artery supporting the nation's industrial development. Doesn’t that already carry a hint of sci-fi flair?

To this day, Yangquan’s main urban districts remain administratively divided into "Urban District," "Mining District," and "Suburban District"—a clear legacy of its industrial era. The city’s heavy industry attracted worker families from across the country (including Liu Cixin’s family, who survived the 1942 famine, worked as officials in Beijing, and were later assigned to Yangquan). Like characters in Liu Cixin’s works, they bore the distinct traits of the collectivist era yet lacked strong regional identities. In an interview, when asked by Chen Luyu, "Do you consider yourself a Beijinger or a Shanxi native?" Liu Cixin replied, "I think of myself as an Earthling."

In the eyes of another Chinese sci-fi writer, Han Song, the stretch from Yangquan to Niangzi Pass was a bustling spectacle of "the clamor of an era creating wonders": "The roads were filled with freight trucks, many hauling coal or flammable chemical materials, rumbling past like prehistoric behemoths." Perhaps the iconic opening scene of *The Wandering Earth 1*, where countless trucks hollow out the Taihang Mountains to power Earth with heavy-element fusion, mirrors how Yangquan’s coal and steel industries contributed to New China’s industrial surge.

The former Yangquan Water Pump Factory industrial site is now the "Yangquan Memory 1947" Cultural Park.

Thus, Yangquan folds together diverse lifestyles. Local Shanxi dishes like *piaomianqu* (a type of noodle) and *hudu* (a savory porridge), the widely popular stir-fried pork with vegetables (*guoyourou*) from the mountainous regions, and the state-factory-era-favorite Weierkang soda remain beloved by Yangquan residents today.

Yangquan cuisine blends flavors from northern Shanxi, North China, and the factory-mining culture.

Yangquan is the intersection where Liu Cixin’s kaleidoscopic sci-fi world meets the coal-dusted reality of everyday life.

How did Niangzi Pass shape Liu Cixin’s sci-fi universe?

On August 23, 2015, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station announced via video link that Chinese author Liu Cixin had won the Hugo Award—the "Nobel Prize of sci-fi literature"—for *The Three-Body Problem*. At the time, Liu was driving down a muddy road in his small hometown of Yangquan, Shanxi. A humble place and grand fantasies connected in a fittingly "sci-fi" way, all tracing back to an even smaller town: Niangzi Pass.

The Ninth Pass of the Great Wall—Niangzi Pass.

For most Chinese, Niangzi Pass is a famous historical landmark. For sci-fi fans, it’s the birthplace of a legend. Take *The Wandering Earth 2*, which distilled the essence of Liu’s works: the "space elevator" from *The Three-Body Problem*, the audacious moon-destroying idea from *The Devourer*, and the AI "MOSS," reminiscent of the future-predicting superstring computer in *The Mirror*—these concepts were largely conceived in Niangzi Pass.

Niangzi Pass isn’t just a strategic fortress; it’s also home to the Niangzi Pass Power Plant, built in 1965. Nestled in the mountains, it was once a key power hub for Shanxi, Hebei, and Beijing.

The cooling towers of Niangzi Pass Thermal Power Plant now stand silent.

Thanks to the plant, living conditions were excellent, transportation for coal was convenient, and it was among the first places in Shanxi to have internet. For Liu Cixin, a computer engineer who believed in "hiding behind his works," the tranquil, low-pressure environment of Niangzi Pass was ideal—so much so that his "slacking off" birthed a new era of Chinese sci-fi.

"Everyone sat in front of computers all day, and no one knew what others were doing. If you bought a low-quality LCD monitor that went dark if you tilted it, you could write while ‘on duty.’ It felt like getting away with something."

The Yangquan Data Center, with its sci-fi-esque design, resembles an Earth Engine.

Niangzi Pass is tiny, but Liu Cixin’s vision is vast. It was in this detached yet unisolated "Red Coast Base" that "the kite of sci-fi still soared high, yet remained tethered to solid ground."

However, as Yangquan underwent economic restructuring, the Niangzi Pass plant began shutting down in 2007, causing Liu immense stress. Around 2008, his works shifted from exploring humanity and nature to "complex experiments in extreme societal conditions." The humans in *The Three-Body Problem*, flattened into "holograms," would never guess the universe’s destruction stemmed from a real-world power plant’s closure.

The Niangzi Pass Thermal Power Plant and a *The Wandering Earth* mural.

The power plant was shut down, but a sci-fi universe was accidentally born. Even the Yangquan lanterns during the New Year were full of space elements. If sci-fi fans come to the Niangzi Pass Power Station, they will see a magical scene—the plant no longer belches black smoke, and its outer walls are adorned with nearly 1,400 square meters of murals, including a classic scene from *The Wandering Earth* where planetary engines propel the "little broken ball" into space. A walk around feels like flipping through a "Liu Cixin's Universe in Minimalist Art."

When the words "Give civilization to time, not time to civilization" were inscribed on the long wall outside the power plant, this not-so-sci-fi heavy industrial city seemed to gain a touch of sci-fi texture.

Enduring the blood and sweat of workers depicted 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 the world to break into the cosmos.

Industrialization has been a future pursued relentlessly by the Chinese for over a century, despite bloodshed, sacrifice, and detours—and Yangquan's history encapsulates it all.

Liu Cixin emerging from Yangquan is an exception, but China, after its winding path to modernization, producing Liu Cixin is an inevitability.

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

Yangquan No. 1 High School produced Liu Cixin—and also Robin Li.

Editor | Bi Zhuolin Houguo

Photo Editor | TAO Gu Jiawei

"I Still Want to Write Sci-Fi That Excites Me" —An Interview with Author Liu Cixin by Wang Yao

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

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

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