light, short, scattered

Chapter 202 "Dig, Dig" Part [-]

I am a miner, my name is Goudan.

Born in a rural area, I didn't learn much about culture, and my brother was one grade older than me.And his grades were much better than mine. My family sold the last acre of land for my brother to study.

Therefore, I could only give up studying completely and follow the older children into the mine.

It was an illegal job at that time, and my salary was 180 yuan a day.

This amount of money was a huge amount of money for me at the age of 14. Of course, this amount of money was also considered ridiculously high in other industries at the time.

Let me briefly talk to you about the process of mining. It is not the kind of mining you imagine.

The clothes for going to the mine are a complete set, from the outer coat to the inner underwear, all arranged by the company.

I was very small back then, and the smallest size I wore was a bit too big.

I heard that we all had to change into company clothes not because the underground was dirty, but because the clothes we brought with us might generate static electricity due to friction. If sparks were generated underground, it might cause a gas explosion.

What I hate wearing the most is the rubber boots used in mining. To be honest, these shoes are almost the same as rain boots when it rains.It's just thicker, harder, and more suffocating for the feet, but the team leader won't let us go into the mine until we finish wearing it.

Yes, there is a group leader for every ten people.My team leader was the eldest boy from the same village who took me to the mine, named Dahai.

Dahai is very careful, and his carefulness is reflected in many aspects.

He would remind each of us to bring a miner's lamp for mining, which is also the thing I dislike the most.Since the heavy helmet on top of my head also has a headlamp, I thought it was superfluous to have one in my hand.But Dahai will always say that if something happens, you will know how useful it is.

Every time you go down the well, all electronic devices are not allowed to be taken down.I heard that it is also to prevent gas explosion caused by static electricity caused by electrical equipment. Dahai hates it every time he mentions this.Because there are always colleagues who secretly take away their mobile phones and want to secretly check the time even if they know there is no signal.

Dahai likes to be with me very much, because I don’t have money to buy a mobile phone, so he is very relieved.

Dahai often says safety first and prevention first.He also memorized these from the work manual, but the leader likes people like him.So he rose in value very quickly, and he became the captain in the first month after I joined.

Dahai often uses his mobile phone to play a short video to teach us by example. That video is a bit ridiculous.Those of us who work in the mines were shown a video of an accident at a gas station. The content of the video was that a person was talking on the phone next to the gas station, which caused an explosion at the gas station.

I thought for a long time that this was given to him by Dahai's leadership, or the project manager.This video may be fake, I never understood why an invisible fire would cause a gas station to explode.It might be a coincidence, but my colleagues said it was caused by something called PS.

Dahai will play this video every time before going down, and then he will say that the truth is the same.How open is the top because a mobile phone exploded to warn us not to bring electronic devices when going to the mine?

When everyone is dressed, it's time to go down to the mine.

To get down to the mine, you need to take an elevator made only of iron plates. Colleagues like to call this elevator a cage.

But I think when the elevator is closed, it does look like a cage for cats and dogs.Colleagues who work around me also often recite a sentence, and if I hear it too often, I will say it myself: the cages are raised one by one, and the day has passed.If the cage is not closed, a lifetime will pass.

I still remember the first time I went into the mine. I thought I could start working as soon as I went down.Later I learned that going down the well in a cage was only the first step. After going down to the bottom, there were still more than ten miles to go.

Colleagues often say that our place is one step further than other mines.There is a section of the road where you need to take a monkey cart, and some mines do not have monkey carts.

The monkey car is a vertical pole with a bench. It looks more like the cable car used in foreign snow mountain climbing.Why is it called a monkey cart? Because only one person can sit on a pole.A person sitting on a pole and holding on to the pole is like a monkey holding on to a tree. Most colleagues don't like monkey cars.Because the monkey car is shaky, the monkey car will take us on a relatively long downhill road.

After the downhill road stabilizes, the monkey cart has come to an end.

Then came the subway, which colleagues often say is the real subway.

I am ashamed that the first time I saw railroad tracks was not on land, but underground.There are trams running parallel to the tracks.We sat on it and sent it deep into the mine. It took more than ten miles to reach the place where we worked.

It is estimated that people who have not seen it with their own eyes will not believe that there is a subway hundreds or even kilometers underground, and this subway is terrifyingly long.

What I like most is this section of the subway ride, because I can take a nap for ten minutes.

I often fall asleep on the train. Sometimes I feel like I have to start working as soon as I close my eyes and open them again.But sometimes I feel like I have been asleep for a long time, but when I open my eyes again I find that I have only walked for less than a few minutes.

Almost all people choose to sleep and close their eyes on the tram because they will start working when they arrive.You must be energetic enough when working, otherwise a slight mistake may endanger your life.

At the beginning of the work, the colleague in front of me used a gun to punch my eyes.

The work area is mapped out, followed by the firing.

Just use explosives to blow up the tunnel, and then start work.

I was responsible for digging, while Dahai and an old master behind me were responsible for building supports.

It was a large shed made of hydraulic machines that stood above my head to prevent the coal mine from collapsing.

This work must be done by skilled people, and requires very tacit cooperation.Support is our last guarantee in case something happens. Whether we can get back safely from the mine depends on support.

Hydraulic platforms composed of supports were built bit by bit in the tunnel, and the rest became simple.

Everyone came out of the tunnel and put the special coal cutter in.

When the machine is in operation, it will harvest the coal forward and then pull it out with a scraper.

This is the entire coal mining process. Install the belt on the transfer machine.

What happens after the coal mine is pulled out is out of our hands.

I heard from the old masters in the mine that I was lucky. People who worked in the mines in earlier years did not have these machines.

The support needs to be built out bit by bit by hand.Coal mines also have to be dug piece by piece, hand by hand.Then push it out and transport it to the warehouse.

Every time I mentioned this, the master would always ask me to look at his hands.

The ravines in the cracks of the palms, the black coal mine has become the texture.It becomes something like a tattoo on the palm of your hand that cannot be removed in this lifetime.

I estimate that briquettes are rare now, but the demand for industrial coal is huge.

What you don’t know is that there are still more than 500 million coal miners in China, and these are just the number on the surface.There may be more actual employees, and it is impossible for some temporary workers and illegal workers to appear in the form and be recorded.

I started working in this industry when I was 14 years old. At that time, I was also one of the illegal workers.

In a blink of an eye, I have been working in the mines for ten years. I spend more conscious days working in the mines than in the mines.

We know in our hearts that there are more and more new energy sources.There are fewer and fewer coal mines, and it is very likely that everyone will be out of work one day.

Of course, there are other mineral materials that we can mine, but coal has been mined for so many years.We all know that digging coal is the easiest, and we hope that a day without work will never occur.

(End of this chapter)