Chapter 3 Landlords, Underground Warring States

Continue to go south by train, and the low gray hills come into view from time to time.In front of the railway, in the wide riverbed, there is a stream, winding and winding, quietly flowing from north to south. This is the mother river of Shanxi people - the Fen River.Due to the drying up of the upstream water source, this former "river" has become the current "stream". After getting off the bus, continue to the west, and the terrain gradually changes from plains to mountains.Leaving Cannes, the destination of our trip is Shengli, Tuancun and Yinjiazhuang. After turning over a mountain plateau, it was already dark. Walking on the winding mountain road, we saw people at the foot of the mountain around us. The coke oven was burning day and night, and in the distance, there were scattered fires all over the mountains and plains, one mountain after another, one ridge after another.

Under the cover of the night, we can clearly see the trend of the distant mountains and the outline of the village either in the col or on the top of the mountain from dozens of miles away. At this time, we can clearly see the uneven mountain road under our feet without using a flashlight. The development of the mining industry in Shanxi has turned the impoverished mountainous area into a "golden nest" that can lay "golden eggs". Today, the "mountain people" with bulging pockets impress the "plain people", and the mountain people have also changed their past image of poverty, self-contempt, shortness of breath and photophobia.

Liujia Village, a small village in the coal-producing mountains of Shanxi, clings to a mountain ridge. In recent years, people here have started digging coal on the mountain near the village. According to Xiao Li, in the early 1980s, when he was still in elementary school, his impression of coal mines came from a village-run coal mine belonging to the "production brigade" on another mountain corner. At that time, the coal mine was considered a wealthy department. There was a black and white TV set in the mine, but only one Shanxi TV station could be received.At that time, the TV station was broadcasting the popular American TV series "Garrison Expendables". Xiao Li said that every night after school, he would take cornbread and his friends and go to the mine in the north of the village to watch TV.

At that time, he had a dream that when he could work here to dig coal, because he could watch TV every day. The coal in the mountains seems to exist only for the primitive mining method of people in the mountains carrying it on their shoulders.From the analysis of geological conditions, this area is very suitable for small and medium-sized coal mining operations, because the state-owned large-scale mechanized coal mining equipment cannot do anything here, which gives opportunities for small and medium-sized coal mines here. With the development of society, some people who have knowledge of coal mining, have work experience, and are familiar with commune cadres began to try to contract link processes such as coal mine production and sales.

After carefully panning for the first pot of gold, they became bold. If you want a package, you must fully contract it! If you want to do it, just do it yourself! So far, the prototypes of the first batch of coal bosses on the Chinese territory have surfaced! The power of role models is infinite. From contracting to working alone, people gradually taste the "scent" of wealth. Driven by this group of "model workers who get rich", it was like waking up from a dream overnight. For a while, people began to search for coal across mountains and mountains. For a time, you dug at the foot of the mountain in the north, and I dug in the middle of the mountain in the south. You searched on the hills and hills in this area, and I searched in the ditches and forks on the opposite mountain ridge.

The scene at that time was: the mountains and plains were full of people, the tops of the mountains were full of people, and people were all engaged in the same action: digging! For a while, you squeezed me and I squeezed you, you took my place, I robbed yours, disputes continued, each other stole equipment, and deceived each other.You have a lot of people, so I will rely on connections and find backers. In order to grab the territory, I even resort to martial arts, fighting and bleeding... Underground, the same struggle continues.Because the coal seam here is shallow, it is easy to dig coal.The distance between the mines is less than 200 meters, and miners who are very close to each other often dig at the same coal seam. In front of the "black gold", the human nature dominated by desire is fully exposed: greed!Still greedy!

In order to produce a little more coal, coal bosses do everything possible to optimize production allocation, and some require miners to work in three shifts 24 hours a day, with machinery and equipment running at full capacity day and night. At the same time, the scramble for the mining face has reached a fever pitch. The two sides sent "spies" to each other to inquire about the proposed mining route, and then began to siege and intercept them under the pit. We can imagine, looking at the black coal piled up like a hill in front of him, how the coal boss, who is exhausted physically and mentally due to the battle of wits and courage between the two sides, should feel at this moment?

Coal too, Fuxi!Woe! To describe the current relationship between Shanxi and coal with a very apt sentence full of classic philosophy, it should be counted as the famous saying "When misfortune comes, blessings depend on it, and blessings come when misfortune rests on it". This is the reality of the local area today: on the one hand, the rapid development of the local coal economy, and on the other hand, the huge environmental protection price paid. Some people ask, what exactly has Shanxi gained from the development of the coal industry?Can the meager fiscal revenue make up for the huge environmental protection cost?

Someone simply exclaimed: Shanxi has coal, hi?Sad? In the spring of 2005, Shanxi Province continued the heat that was different from previous years in 2004. In the middle, an exciting piece of data proves this reality: news came from the relevant departments of Shanxi Province that due to energy shortage, the GDP of Shanxi Province increased by 14.1%.The official official words are as follows: "Shanxi is developing the fastest among the six central provinces." This means that Shanxi's economy has entered the fast lane since then, and Shanxi people are not far from a prosperous life.

However, the "pain" brought about by coal mining is absolutely "lower" than the wealth brought about by the rise in coal prices. cost. This may have been doomed from the first day of coal mining in Shanxi Province. Today, Shanxi's pollution has also begun to attract the attention of the outside world. The disaster of coal pollution affects the whole world. Here, let's talk about these "two small things" first: As early as the beginning of 2007, relevant state agencies organized experts and scholars to study the subject of "the impact of medium-distance transportation of air pollutants in the northern and central parts of Shanxi Province on Beijing".The results are shown in the completed report: There is an obvious transmission channel for atmospheric pollutants to Beijing in the north-central region of Shanxi.

How serious is the pollution in Shanxi Province? I remember that before the national "two sessions" in 2007, a senior government official in Shanxi Province was asked by the media about this issue at the press conference on "The Rise of the Six Central Provinces". He said frankly: "Shanxi's pollution is still the first in the country. !" Among them, it is well documented that among the national key cities for pollution prevention and control released by the relevant state departments in 2004, five cities in Shanxi Province were "on the list".Among them, Linfen, Yangquan and Datong are the most polluted among all the "named" cities.The reason why several other prefecture-level cities in Shanxi Province are not included in the pollution list is because the local "does not have an atmospheric monitoring system."If this "system" exists, the resulting "monitoring results" can of course be imagined. The "national curse" of "the pollution of Shanxi, the pollution of the province and the country" comes from this. Let me talk about the second "little thing". In March 2005, a senior official of Shanxi Province told the participants at the province's environmental protection work conference that a few days ago, when he met with the Norwegian ambassador who came to cooperate with Shanxi to develop an air pollution prevention and control planning project, he asked On the other hand, why is Norway interested in pollution in Shanxi? The other party's answer surprised the official: "Because Shanxi's pollution can drift to Norway through air pollution!" Shouldn't this be the "ball curse" of "Shanxi's burden affects the whole world!" ! The pain of environmental pollution, how much "pain" is it? In some people's minds, environmental protection work is an approximation, and so is the pollution situation. But here, we have a set of data: In the air pollution prevention and control overall planning project jointly completed by Shanxi Province and Norway, the relevant departments of Shanxi Province calculated the air pollution loss of the province. Taking 2000 as the base year, the final calculation value of the "air pollution loss" index item in Shanxi Province 8.097 billion yuan. The pain of environmental pollution lies at the source. An environmental protection expert in Shanxi Province pointed out: "The impact caused by the coal mining process is also an important pollution." The reality before us is that in 2004, 63.2% of the 26 major rivers in the whole province stopped flowing. In the same period, the area of ​​soil erosion in Shanxi Province accounted for 70% of the province's land area. In addition, due to the underground mined-out areas and subsidence areas caused by coal mining, the province's groundwater loss is more than 1 billion tons every year, and the production and life of the people have been seriously affected. Experts pointed out: "It is generally believed that for every ton of coke produced, about 400 cubic meters of gas will be produced. Half of the gas (50% for the self-use of the mechanical coke oven) will be discharged in vain." This is a report from the authoritative department of environmental protection in Shanxi Province: The "mechanical coke oven" currently in use around the world is a three-stage coke oven completed by Germany in 1904. Its biggest problem is that it cannot completely solve pollution.And the most terrible thing is that the use of this coke oven, a strong carcinogen-benzopyrene, emits a lot! The data is scary, and the reality is cruel. According to the monitoring of environmental scientific research institutes in Shanxi Province, benzopyrene has caused large-scale pollution in Shanxi.If calculated according to the 100 million tons of coke production in Shanxi Province in 2003, the benzopyrene produced in Shanxi Province will be nearly 200 tons. This kind of pollution is inseparable from the coal rough processing industry model that is popular in the coal-producing areas. An environmental protection cadre in Shanxi said that what we need to solve is the problem of gas conversion after coal coking.He further pointed out that the smelting of coal into coke requires a large amount of gas.However, in most of the small coal mines in Shanxi, most of them use local coking technology.That is to say, the gas produced in this "Shanxi" production process is all discharged in the open air. It is like sunlight and air, affecting our body hair and skin all the time.