Word: guizhou
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that figure represents only a fraction of all deaths. Embarrassed by its appalling safety record, China's Cabinet finally took action in mid-June, ordering all small state-owned mines to halt production for safety checks and calling for intensified raids against illegal mines, such as the one in Guizhou province that claimed Zhang's husband. Last week, Premier Zhu Rongji visited that desperately poor province to tout the program's success and report that 5,117 small coal mines have been forced to close this year...
...reality, the government's efforts are little more than black smoke and trick mirrors. Although local cadres have dutifully reported illegal-mine closures, many are secretly being kept open. In desolate places like Guizhou, there is no other way to make money. (Many provincial officials are shareholders in illicit, privately owned mines.) In other areas the ban has been unevenly enforced, creating a deadly problem: as some mine shafts are blocked by government inspectors, those still in operation receive less ventilation, increasing the chances of a gas explosion. Despite Beijing's highly publicized campaign, 3,200 miners have died...
...Guizhou's sunbaked earth yields little above ground. But just a few meters down, the earth turns black and hard. The coal is tantalizingly easy to reach; so are the lethal pockets of gas that cause explosions or asphyxiate workers. Zhang's husband, Li Zhenhua, had worked for a decade in a cluster of small, illegal mines near his Duck Pond village. Whenever an accident claimed lives, the pit would be ordered to close?but another would invariably open not far away. Much of the illegal mining is done at night to avoid government monitors. In any case, the inspectors...
...crouching low to heave their pickaxes into the crumbling blackness. To pass the time, some light cigarettes, risking a deadly explosion. The pay for a day's work is $1.20. If the miners are lucky, they can take small chunks of coal back home to heat their hearth. Still, Guizhou's able-bodied men clamor for these jobs. "How can the government close the mines?" asks Zhu Hua, 20, who has been working underground for five years. "We need the coal. Everybody does...
...would toss a coin at a crossroads to decide which way to head. When my money ran out, I found ways of making enough to keep me going. I became a fortune-teller, a hairdresser, a peddler of fake toothpaste and pink chiffon scarves. I helped make sofas in Guizhou province and fished for yellow carp on Qinghai Lake. In the cities, I would camp in flea-ridden hostels, in the countryside I would often just sleep on the ground...