Chapter 22 Chenxi coal

The famous coal field in Xiangxi is in Chenxi.If a traveler takes a car by road and starts from Yuanling in the morning, he must have breakfast at this place.Road cars have to cross the river here, and then proceed along the south bank of Mayang River.The traveler's first impression is that all he can see beside the station are numerous coal piles, and a few black chimneys between the coal piles in the distance.When crossing the river, what I saw was that there were many people on the pier, many boatmen, many miners, and many leisure people.When crossing halfway, what I saw was the scenery of mountains and rivers, which is delicate but not delicate.The water is clear and urgent, and two feet down you can see stones rolling on the bottom of the water like clams.After the transition, you must think that although the place is good, the people seem to be dull, and although the underground is rich, the average person is extremely poor.I thought it was weird, but it wasn't weird.Although passers-by are concerned about the prosperity and prosperity of the local area and the lives of the residents, as usual, they cannot understand the local issues at a glance.

There are two slogans of the Chenhe boatmen, all travelers are familiar with, that slogan is: "Travel all the way in the world, and Chenxidu is sad." In fact, Chenxidu is not very sad, but the boatmen don't see it widely. A Yuanshui River and seven tributary rivers are aligned for thousands of miles, just talk about it. ... The location of Chenxi County is just at the confluence of two rivers. The small stone city is built on the cliffs at the foot of the estuary, facing the water and leaning against the mountains.The river is clear and urgent, and it is transparent when it is three feet deep.For many years, there have been various beautiful ships traveling to and from the Hunan-Guizhou border.

The top of the mountain is limestone, no matter it is sunny or rainy, you can see blue and white smoke flying from the lime kiln.There are many houses with black tiles and white walls, and the tiles and rafters are closely connected like exquisite patterns.The opposite river forms a corner with the small mountain city, and the upper reaches is a triangular small mound, and there is a wide flat for ship repairing and shipbuilding on the small mound.The location is a little lower, which is a mountain, near the river to pull out the peak. The foot of the mountain has been washed by the torrent of Yuanshui River, and washed by the long flow of Mayang River on the other side. The rocks near the water are exquisite and transparent.There is a magnificent temple in the middle of the mountain, and there are thousands of stone Buddhas of different sizes among the rocks outside the temple.In the half-empty temple hanging on the rock, you can look at the white sails of the boats going up and listen to the singing of the oarsmen on the boats going down.The boat crosses the current, and the difficulty and beauty can be divided equally.

The place is a coal-producing area, and it seems that there is no coal everywhere, so coal tunnels and coal wells dug by local methods can be seen all over the front and back of the mountain.There are often hundreds of coal ships moored along the banks of the river. From time to time, there are some men with black faces and black hands and feet between the upper and lower Hongjiang Rivers and Changde Wharf, transporting large pieces of black coal to the ships and throwing them into the cabins.If you go to an inclined well for coal extraction, you will see countless people with the same black face and hands and feet, naked, with a rag around the waist and a small lamp on their head, crawling into that black well that looks like hell. climb out.The mine can collapse or be filled with water at any time. If it collapses or floods, those who go to hell to beg for a living will naturally end up. (Quoted from "Xiang Xing San Ji")

After the war broke out, coal fields in many parts of the country were given to the Japanese, and those in Rehe in the three eastern provinces were already finished.Suiyuan, Hebei, and Shandong Anwei are all gone.However, the coal in Chenxi County was delivered locally until February 27th, and there was no buyer for two yuan a ton.It was transported to Yuanling, which is a distance of 140 miles, and few people used it for 20 cents and 100 catties.The mountains along the banks of the river are full of miscellaneous trees and weeds. The country people have nothing to do and no way to earn a living. There are too many people carrying firewood and grass to the city to exchange oil and salt. The best oak charcoal can only be sold for a penny at the end of the year. One catty, except for workshops, distilleries and larger houses that need coal, everyone uses firewood and charcoal because of habit.This kind of thermal power, high quality and pure fuel, just like the local young elites in the past, has become a kind of dirty and useless waste in western Hunan.Although those in charge of the local area know that these two things are extremely useful, they don't know how to use them.In the end, the young people either let them wander, or let them corrupt.

Cheap fuel had to be transported to Changde, five hundred miles away, by wooden civilian boats, at a cost of one and a half to two or sixty cents per ton.At the same time, at a price of about 250 yuan per ton, the kerosene shipped back to Meifuhang was used as lighting oil for counties and cities in western Hunan. Although Fuyuan is in the local area, there are poor people everywhere, not only those who dig coal in wells are very poor, and can only rely on a little income every day. The whole family lives in a dilapidated, cramped, wet and dirty small house, hopeless and helpless. get mixed up.As soon as the child reaches the age of ten or so, he has to participate in this competition for life.Many small owners of mines, because of ignorance, large donations, high cost, inconvenient transportation, and coal that is too cheap, have no choice but to go out of business and go bankrupt.

Whose responsibility should this be?Looking at the scenery by the river and the group of dirty and emaciated coal bearers, the comparison of the two always makes people think far and far.The past has become the past.Come to this ground, control steel, conquer nature, so that everyone's energy is not completely wasted on this simple and poor life, so that most people live a little more like living people, who should be responsible for this?Will there be a group of strong and capable young people tomorrow, with ambitions and great wishes, to take on this arduous and great work?Is it possible that everything will remain the same until tomorrow?The answer to this question should lie with the youth themselves.

This is a family story of a sacred miner—Xiang Dacheng, 44 years old, went to work in the No. 3 shaft of Houpo XX Company every day, and descended 43 feet in a basket to the work place.I worked twelve hours a day and earned eighteen cents.The woman Li Shi, forty years old, went to the river wharf to mend clothes and trousers for the boatmen, and she could get three or two hundred dollars a day.If you have nothing to do or go to acquaintances, you will let people use broken porcelain pieces to let blood, and use copper coins dipped in clear oil to scrape and scrape.A man and a woman gave birth to seven children, and five died, leaving only two daughters. The eldest was sixteen years old, and at the age of thirteen, she was spotted by the platoon leader of the garrison army, who offered two yuan to lure her into death.When the father found out about this, he beat the girl severely, and for the two yuan, the two couples quarreled for a while, and the woman rolled her bun in the mud and cried.But this matter, like other things, will soon become a thing of the past.By the age of fifteen, the girl already knew how to have fun in her new life, and she got a little money to buy sugarcane rice cakes to eat.So the sailors are often asked to play on the empty boat, not afraid of being ugly or anything else.But when my mother heard from acquaintances when she got money, spent it on the pier, and didn't get it back, she used all kinds of wild words to scold and discourage her.At the age of sixteen, her father came up with an idea and bet her to an "old monster" for twenty-six yuan.So the girl changed into brand-new calico clothes, combed her hair slickly, and put makeup on her face. She happily came to a small house by the river to receive the local military, police, businessmen, and political circles. According to the rules, the door is closed once for fifty cents.Before long, I learned to sing small tunes, military songs, party songs, patriotic songs, and songs about boatmen urging oars.When my mother came, I secretly put ten pawn one hundred copper coins or some dime tickets into my mother's hand, so that the old monster would not see it.With a lot of knowledge and experience, he is naturally very considerate in entertaining customers, and his business is a little better, and he has become a local "Guanyin".Everyone on board knows the Guanyin at the pier.Once, a messenger from the county yamen was jealous of the people on the boat, so he beat the living Guanyin with a wooden pestle, and at the end, he stripped off the little woman's trousers and threw them into the river.Angry and bitter, I cried for a long time, with a big lump in my heart, unable to think about it, grabbed the cigarette box and poured it into my mouth, swallowed three qian of tobacco cream, and died the next day.

When the parents got the news, they came and cried for a while, took some "burning and burying money" and left.Not long after he died, he was carried away in a white wooden box and buried.The youngest daughter is eleven years old. Every day, she goes to the boat repair place on the river beach to collect firewood and bring it home to cook. One day, the boatbuilder deliberately raised an ax to threaten her, but she was not afraid.The shipbuilder then urinated in front of the child even more, trying to frighten her in another way.The girl was humiliated, so she sat on the piled lumber by the river, scolded the old shipwright with all the ugly words she heard, and ran home after scolding.When I got home, I saw my mother crying by the stove. It turned out that the old man was crushed to death by coal in the coal well. ...In the middle of the night, the mother thought to herself, the company has twelve yuan for security fees.The child is twelve years old this year, and in another four years, he will be able to earn money.Although life is hard, there is still a little hope. ...

This is what we celebrate as the sanctity of labor, the true story of a working family.The traveler's curiosity, if it needs to be confirmed, is very convenient there, just because such families are so common, and stories can be picked up everywhere. What use are the sympathy of scholars and the investigation of experts to this kind of people?Unless there is a solution other than investigation and sympathy, such people will always spend their days in the same situation with blood and tears, and it seems that hell is made for them.Their lives just illustrate the inevitable variety of "life" surrounded by ignorance and poverty.When scholars face this kind of life, they are not worthy of sympathy, and should be ashamed.It is precisely because of the dignity of these people's lives that scholars do not understand it.

Everyone knows that there is coal in Chenxi County, but they don't know anything else.In the painting shops in various counties in western Hunan, there is often a mouth-written scroll signed by Ran Weng Mizihe, which is very thick and attracts attention.This Mr. Mi is from Chenxi County.