He wrote that officials imprisoned about 700 herders around Jinyintan, accusing them of joining counterrevolutionary gangs. Seventeen died under brutal interrogation. Up to 9,000 herders were expelled in forced marches, given only a day or so to prepare and allowed to take just a few yaks per family. Hundreds died on the journey, beaten and abused by guards, Mr. Yin wrote.
“People were no better than beasts of burden,” a surviving herder told an ethnic Mongolian researcher who published their accounts in a small Chinese magazine in 2007. “We weren’t counted as humans.”
The thousands of scientists, technicians and soldiers who poured into Project 221 knew little about what had preceded them. At its peak, Plant 221 had 18 workshops, labs and buildings scattered across 220 square miles, and up to 30,000 scientists, workers and guards lived there.
But even as the secret city forged ahead to build a hydrogen bomb, it was not immune to the political storms tearing China apart. In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution to purge and purify his movement, and the nuclear site — now politically suspect, having been built with the help of the hated Soviets — erupted in purges, interrogations and fighting between rival radical factions.
Mr. Wei, the retired physicist, said he watched as one of Plant 221’s top scientists, Qian Jin, was clubbed by interrogators. Mr. Qian died a few days later. Officials detained and interrogated about 4,000 workers in the nuclear project, and about 50 were executed, beaten to death or killed themselves under the relentless accusations, according to Mr. Wei.
Those events go unmentioned in the museum, and some former officials from the plant have urged Mr. Wei not to dwell on such tragedies, he said.
But he tells them there is no getting away from the past.
“I emphasize that we should reflect on it,” Mr. Wei said. “I still have dreams of 221.”
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