This study examines early Chinese industrialization through the lens of "industrial memory circles"—recurring patterns of technological knowledge acquisition, systematic amnesia, and partial recovery. Using German engineer Eugen Ruppert's firsthand account Reise um die Welt mit mehrjährigem Aufenthalt in China und Japan (Journey Around the World with Several Years' Stay in China and Japan), we investigate how the Hanyang Iron and Steel Works (1890-1911), China's largest industrial project, repeatedly cycled through phases of initial success ("Build Memory"), collective amnesia marked by complete knowledge loss and institutional forgetting, and attempted recovery ("Memory Back"). The research asks: How did industrial knowledge transfer and collective amnesia manifest spatially and temporally in late Qing China? What cultural and institutional factors transformed technological progress into systematic forgetting? How can digital humanities methods visualize these cycles of memory and amnesia to reveal patterns invisible to traditional historical analysis?

The German text underwent systematic processing using SpaCy 3.0 for NER, PhraseMatcher for identifying 72 industrial terms, and regular expressions for temporal extraction. A trilingual classification framework categorized 632 text segments into memory phases using 46 keywords, including 22 amnesia markers such as "Misswirtschaft" (mismanagement), "Schrotthaufen" (scrap heaps), and "jedweder Beschreibung trotzende" (defying any description). GeoPandas processed CHGIS 1911 data for spatial integration, while interactive visualizations employed Leaflet.js for maps, D3.js for animated timelines showing amnesia progression, and custom HTML5/JavaScript dashboards revealing how industrial memory transformed into collective forgetting.

Analysis revealed that amnesia dominated the industrial narrative, with the Hanyang Iron Works exhibiting dramatic cycles from "vorzüglich" (excellent) facilities to complete institutional collapse—what Ruppert described as "jedweder Beschreibung trotzende Misswirtschaft" (mismanagement defying any description), where sophisticated Belgian equipment became "Schrotthaufen" and technical knowledge vanished entirely. The phase transition matrix showed a critical finding: Build Memory collapsed into Amnesia three times more frequently than Amnesia recovered into Memory Back, with zero direct recoveries without first acknowledging failure. This collective amnesia concentrated spatially at production sites in Hubei while administrative centers remained immune, suggesting industrial amnesia was site-specific rather than systemic.

Cultural barriers emerged as primary drivers of collective amnesia. Traditional beliefs, corruption, and xenophobia created conditions where industrial knowledge could not consolidate into lasting memory. Foreign engineers, despite dominating the technical landscape, could not prevent recurring amnesia because the forgetting was culturally embedded rather than technically driven. The visualization reveals amnesia not as passive forgetting but as active erasure, with specific locations becoming "memory holes" where industrial knowledge repeatedly disappeared.

The interactive platform transforms these amnesia patterns into explorable narratives through multiple layers: animated timelines showing memory decay, heat maps revealing amnesia hotspots, and phase transition diagrams demonstrating the asymmetric path from knowledge to forgetting. Pop-up panels link specific amnesia events to textual evidence, such as facilities described as "vollständig verfallen" (completely decayed) or operations experiencing "totaler Stillstand" (total standstill).

This research pioneers digital methods for quantifying collective amnesia in industrial contexts. The "memory circle" framework demonstrates that industrial amnesia in cross-cultural technology transfer is not accidental forgetting but systematic, culturally-mediated knowledge rejection. By visualizing amnesia as a geographical and temporal phenomenon, the study reveals how certain spaces become zones of recurring forgetting, where industrial memory repeatedly fails to consolidate. The asymmetric transition patterns provide mathematical evidence that collective amnesia functions as a structural feature of failed industrialization rather than an aberration.

The findings challenge linear modernization theories by showing how industrial development can become trapped in cycles where collective amnesia erases previous learning. The visualization of these amnesia patterns offers insights for contemporary technology transfer, suggesting that preventing industrial amnesia requires addressing cultural and institutional barriers, not just technical training. The quantified evidence that foreign expertise could not prevent collective amnesia has implications for understanding why certain industrial initiatives repeatedly fail despite technical competence.

Analysis relies on a single German source with detected European bias. Geocoding limitations and keyword-based classification may underrepresent subtle forms of amnesia. Future work should integrate Chinese sources to understand amnesia from multiple perspectives and develop machine learning approaches to detect implicit patterns of institutional forgetting.

Keywords: Industrial Amnesia; Collective Memory; Digital History; China Industrialization; Memory Circles; Technology Transfer; Spatial Visualization; Hanyang Iron Works