Although I had a general impression after listening to Team Cao's introduction to the Chengjialing Mine before, I was still very surprised when I really got here. It is at least 20 years behind the current era, and a small number of old Soviet-style buildings are basically only left with the frame of masonry, and the messy red brick houses scattered around are covered with a thick layer of gray-black dust, which may have never been cleaned since it was built, with different thicknesses and shades, as if the blood scabs on the human body healed after cracking, and then cracked again after healing, thicker and thicker, but no longer falling off, piece by piece, layer by layer, full of devastation and dilapidation.

The town is deserted with few pedestrians and no shops, and I would have considered it a ghost town if it weren't for the occasional miner basking in the sun at the base of the wall.

The miners also looked a little strange, it stands to reason that they should enjoy the fact that the mine is shut down, and they rarely bask in the sun on the ground, but they are expressionless, not the kind of indifference that rejects people thousands of miles away, but a kind of thoughtless emptiness, forgetting the stagnation of time.

Our car drove through the town, along the widest and most bumpy dirt road, and soon arrived at the mine. When I entered the factory, I realized that there were still many mistakes in the introduction of the mine before Team Cao.

The scale of the Chengjialing mine is not small, the sorting plant, the smelter, and the coal storage plant are lined up, extending along the gentle impact fan under the stone mountain, in order to prevent the flash flood in the rainy season, the side of the river valley is piled up with a stone wall that is nearly four meters high and two meters wide, but the stone wall has obvious traces of heightening, and it should have been repaired in different periods. The lower part of the stone wall is supposed to be made of local materials and made of stones from the mountain, and the style is supposed to be hundreds of years ago. The upper part has the process of cement trench joint, which is obviously a project in recent years.

In this way, the Chengjialing mine should not have been excavated in the late 80s, and its mining history should be pushed back at least a few hundred years. However, Cao's statement shows that the mine was closed during this period, and mining was interrupted for a long time, and more than once, but what was the reason for the closure of the mine, was it just because the quality of the coal was not high?

Further inside, the surrounding buildings confirmed my suspicions. There are brick houses in the late Qing Dynasty, small buildings in the Republic of China, Soviet-style tube buildings, and modern factories with very new materials, these buildings are stacked together in a disorderly manner, which makes me feel that time and space are out of order.

We went to the office of the mine, a simple two-story building, which looked like a Soviet-style building in the fifties and sixties, although it was a little dilapidated, but the height of the air was high, and it was a north-south transparent structure, although it was built against the mountain, the small building did not look dim, but for some reason, the temperature inside felt a few degrees lower than outside.

As soon as Team Cao stopped the car, Xiao Lei and a middle-aged man in his forties who was a little thin greeted him.

"Team Cao, you couldn't get through with Uncle Chang on the phone last night, but it scared me to death, if it wasn't for Chief Dai to stop me, I would have driven down to pick you up. Fortunately, I received a text message from you later. Xiao Lei said as he helped us with our luggage. Xiao Lei hasn't seen him for a few days, he has become very haggard, he has lost a lot of weight, and his eyes are a little black, and it seems that he is not resting well.

"Leizi, are you a child, how did you become a mother-in-law and mother-in-law, driving at night, encountering something in the middle of the road, delaying the trip, it's normal, what the hell are you doing. Team Cao glared at Xiao Lei.

"Hey, I blame me for this, I told Officer Lei that the fog was old in the middle of the night, and the sky was dark and narrow, and Officer Lei was worried, so he was ready to pick it up. "The person who spoke should be Dai Mine Chief, but this accent doesn't sound like a local.

"Foggy in the middle of the night? Although the temperature difference at night is large this season, it won't be foggy, right?" I hurriedly asked, but Dai Mine Chief's words let me know that the place where we stayed overnight was called Luoshiling.

"Chengjialing is very strange in this area, there is no law and sign of fog, there are all year round, it is said to come, and it is very large, often the visibility is less than ten meters, the road of Luoshiling, in the past few years, there are no less than ten coal trucks falling under the cliff, and then there are regulations in the mine, after dark, vehicles are not allowed to go down the mountain again. Team Cao, Professor Chang, the conditions in the mine are difficult, let's go into the house and chat. ”

When I entered the small conference room in the office area, I found that there were two people sitting in the room, one with a face full of furrow-like wrinkles, hunched over, and looking to be sixty or seventy years old. The other was dark-faced, but strong, not tall, and presumably an underground worker.

Xiao Lei helped us make the tea, and gave everyone an introduction to each other, and we learned that the elder surnamed Li was actually only fifty-three years old, and the long-term high-intensity underground work made him retreat for more than two years, but his body had completely collapsed, lung disease, throat disease, and kidney disease. But Lao Li is the only old miner who is still alive after the resumption of production in the Chengjialing mine, and no one is more familiar with the underground situation than him, so this time the mine manager Dai also invited him over.

Another miner, surnamed Zhong, is 28 years old and has been down to Shaft 17 several times, and most of the miners who died in the previous stage were his colleagues.

"Team Cao, after Xiao Du and I came to the mine, we visited and investigated all the deceased before and after the accident, Xiao Du and they did the sorting and analysis upstairs, and the report will be done tomorrow. Today, I invite Lao Li and Xiao Zhong to come just to learn more about the history of the mine and the situation underground. "Xiao Lei introduced us.

"Very good, Xiao Lei, you will execute your original plan, and we can not exist. Team Cao lit a cigarette and listened intently.

Lao Li, a retired miner, had to stop and rest after the last three or five sentences, and even in the process of speaking, he was often interrupted by a violent cough, and at the same time, there was a strong local accent, and it took me a lot of effort to get a rough understanding.

Lao Li is an authentic local, originally a farmer, when the county rebuilt the Chengjialing mine in 86 years, he was the first batch of miners to go down the mine, and worked in the Chengjialing mine for more than ten years. Lao Li is a miner who became a monk halfway, but the ancestors of Lao Li's family are all living in the mines, his grandfather and great-grandfather are all miners, and they are also in the Chengjialing Mine, but in the Qing Dynasty, this mine was called Lingbei Mine.

Further forward, the history of mining in Lingbei can be traced back to the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and no less than five ancestors of the Li family are buried here. The location of the mine site now is the easternmost side of the Beiling Yumai, and there is a mountain separation from the mine in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

When Lao Li said this, Dai Mine Chief took advantage of his cough and interjected, "Cao Ju, the place where you parked last night was the abandoned Dongyang Village, where there was a fork in the road to the west, which was Luoshiling, and then thirty or forty miles away was the mine of the Ming and Qing dynasties that Lao Li said. Now there is no one to walk on that road, and no one cares, and it is almost blocked by falling rocks. ”

"When were the mines of the Ming and Qing dynasties sealed, and why were they sealed? I think there are still some buildings in this town during the Republic of China and the Japanese occupation, and the Chengjialing mine was excavated again during that period?" I then asked.

"Professor Chang looked carefully, you are right, the old mine in the Ming and Qing dynasties should have been sealed during the Daoguang period, and the specific reason for the closure of the mine is too long to say. But when I was young, no one in the village allowed children to go to the old mine to play, saying that there were monsters in the well. The fog at night that Chief Dai said was there for a while. ”

"After the Republic of China, Yan Xishan built a new mine on the site of the current Chengjialing mine, and most of the houses in the current town were built at that time. Later, the Japanese came and occupied the mine, and all the people in our village fled to Shaanxi, and the Japanese built several new factories near the town outside the mine, and opened a few new mines, but the specific situation is not very well understood. ”

"My family moved back four or six years after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, but by then the coal mine had already been sealed. I remember that when I was about five or five years old, the province sent technicians to inspect once, and it seemed that because the quality of the coal was not high, it did not resume production, but instead transported the excavation equipment from the original mine to other places. In this way, it was not until 87 years that the county established a mining company and restarted production. ”

Listening to Lao Li intermittently talk about the history of the Jialing Mine, Team Cao thanked twice, turned his head and whispered to Xiao Lei, "Xiao Lei, go down to check whether the county archives have detailed information on the closure of the mine and the suspension of production, and the five or five years of mine exploration report to see if you can find it." ”

After arranging the work for Xiao Lei, Team Cao smiled apologetically at Lao Li and Xiao Zhong, took the warm pot, and refilled some tea for them, which made the two of them get up quickly, "I can't help it, I can't help it" and kept talking.

"What's the point of not believing? I invited you two to help me today, you are guests, you should be, why are the miners who died in the fire in the town, and they all went down to the seventeenth shaft? This is too strange, isn't it?" Team Cao pressed the two back into their chairs.

Hearing Team Cao ask about the fire, both of them looked a little heavy, Xiao Zhong looked at Lao Li more and more, Lao Li nodded lightly to Xiao Zhong, it seems that Lao Li still has a high prestige among the miners.

"Leader Cao, in fact, there is nothing strange about it, the worker who burned to death hit an evil under the No. 17 shaft, and there is coal essence underneath. Although Xiao Zhong muttered quietly, we were still startled when we heard his words.

(The owl is bright and the night is dark, and the chicken is bright and the night is dark, and the similarities and differences are the same.) Or if the owl is different, then the chicken is the same, or if the chicken is different, then the owl is the same. The difference between day and night, the difference between day and night, the same day and night, the chime in the husband's ears, I smell it, and I see the flowers in my eyes. My day and night, and his day and night, are the day that cannot be said to be bright, and the night that cannot be called dusk. Those who can see all the dim are the only adults -- "Huashu")