816 Project Scenic Area

The 816 Project Scenic Area is located in Baitao Street, Fuling District, Chongqing. It served as a nuclear material production base deployed in a mountain cave, independently designed and constructed by New China, with the top-secret code name "816." Approved for construction by the Central Military Commission in 1966, its full name is "Third-Line Construction Project of Nuclear Reactor and Chemical Reprocessing Plant in Cave." It is a typical representative of more than 1,100 projects in New China's "Third-Line Construction." In those years, more than 60,000 construction troops were mobilized from all over the country to Baitao, starting an 18-year engineering construction. The project went through three stages: rapid construction, slow construction, and suspension of construction. The total excavation area was 104,000 square meters. The cave consists of 18 large caves and more than 130 pilot caves, branch caves, tunnels, and shafts. The main cave is as high as 79.6 meters. By 1984, 85% of the construction workload and approximately 60% of the installation workload had been completed, with a total investment of 746 million RMB (at the price level of that year). Due to the complexity and difficulty of the project design and construction, it is known as the "Three Gorges in the Cave, Underground Great Wall," and the "Heshibi Jade deeply buried in the mountains," and it has the "three divine" characteristics of being magical, mysterious, and sacred.