Short, Light, Free - Chapter 181

My name is Gou Dan and I’m a miner.

I was born in the village and I am a bit uncultured. I have a brother who is a year older. His grades were much better than mine so our family sold our last piece of land to send him abroad to study.

As such, I could only give up on learning and enter the mine with other kids who were slightly older than I was.

It was considered illegal, but I still took home 18 dollars a day.

To a 14-year-old, that was a huge sum, and it was also much higher than what other industries were paying.

I’ll tell you briefly about the mining procedures. It’s not as simple as planting and digging.

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We wore a full set of uniform that was prepared by the company.

I was young at that time so even the smallest size was a tad too big for me.

We wore uniforms not because it was dirty down there, but because our own clothes might produce friction and static electricity, causing sparks or gas that leads to an explosion.

I hated the boots the most. They were similar to rain boots but thicker, stiffer and more unbreathable. Our leader would not let us enter the mine if we do not put them on, so I had no other choice.

For every 10 miners, there was a leader. My leader was another big kid from my village. His name is Dahai.

He was very meticulous in many aspects.

He would constantly remind us to bring our mine light, something that I absolutely hated. We already had a headlight attached to our helmet so the lamp was unnecessary in my opinion. “Wait ’til something happens,” Dahai would repeat.

We weren’t allowed to bring any electrical equipment down to the site to prevent explosions. Dahai would get annoyed when reminding us about it because some workers would secretly bring their phones along to check for messages or the time.

Dahai enjoyed working with me since I had no money for a phone so he had no need to worry.

Dahai often emphasized that safety was the priority and that prevention was better than cure. These were things he memorized from the manual, but the higher-ups liked it so Dahai quickly got promoted. By my first month, he had already become a leader.

Dahai would often play a hilarious guide video from his phone to educate us. He would also show us a video about an explosion that was triggered by a mobile phone in a gas station.

For a long time, I had thought that the videos were given to him by his manager and that they might be fake. I couldn’t understand how an invisible fire could lead to an explosion. It might have been a coincidence, and another colleague mentioned the possibility of photoshop.

Dahai would replay the video and warn us not to bring electrical devices down before we enter the mine. It had become a standard procedure.

Everyone would get dressed and proceed down.

We had to take a lift made from iron panels, and we liked to call it the elevator cage.

Whenever the lift door closed, we would feel like cats or dogs that had been locked up. A colleague would often chime, “Down and up goes the elevator cage and a day is over. Down goes the elevator cage but not up, and our lives are over.”

I remember thinking that we could start work immediately after descending, but I soon realized that that wasn’t the case. Entering the mine was only the first step, we still had to walk over 10 kilometers upon landing.

My colleagues explained that our mine was different from others. There were paths that required what we call a monkey car.

It works like a cable car but it was stripped to the minimum, with just a bench and rope. Only one person can sit on the bench at a time, and he has to grab the rope like how monkeys grab onto tree branches. Majority of the miners disliked sitting on it because it was a shaky and an uncomfortable journey.

Next, we would have to take the railway cart.

On the track was a trolleybus that transported us deep into the mine cave, where we could finally get to work.

No one would believe that there was a railway a few hundred feet underground unless they saw it for themselves.

My favorite part was taking the cart since it gave me about 10 minutes of rest.

I would fall asleep in the cart, just like most of the other miners, because we needed to focus a lot at work or risk endangering our lives.

The front workers would lead the job by drilling holes, delineating the work region, and setting off the controlled explosions.

After the explosions, us miners were in charge of digging while Dahai and another teacher would start constructing and provide shelter to ensure our safety.

They would cover our heads with a shed made from a hydraulic pressure machine to prevent the collapse of the coal mine.

This job required specialized skills and total cooperation. Their protection was our last guard and our lives depended on them.

Once the shed was done, things would become easier.

Everyone would exit the lane and insert the customized coal extraction machine.

The machine would cut the mine and pull them out.

These make up the procedure of coal mining, and the steps after pulling it out weren’t any of our business anymore.

The teacher said that I was lucky since these machines weren’t available a while back.

The shelter had to be built manually, along with the digging, collecting, and even transporting of coal.

He would show me the cracks on his palms, which were permanently stained black due to the coal. There was no way to remove such stains.

Coal briquettes weren’t common anymore but a large volume of coal was still needed in many industries.

What you don’t know is that there are only about 500 registered miners in China but actually much more unrecorded employees.

I started at 14 years old and was considered an illegal worker.

Time passed and I had already worked in the mine for 10 whole years. More of my meaningful experiences and memories revolved around life underground than above ground.

We were all aware that new energy was becoming more and more popular whereas coal mining was in decline. It was only a matter of time before we run out of a job.

There would be other mineral ores for us to dig, sure, but we all knew that coal mining was the easiest. We do not wish for our job to ever be terminated.