Chapter 181 (1/2)

Chapter 181: Dig On, Dig On I

My name is Gou Dan and I'm a miner .

I was born in the village and I am a bit uncultured . I have a brother who is a year older . His grades were much better than mine so our family sold our last piece of land to send him abroad to study .

As such, I could only give up on learning and enter the mine with other kids who were slightly older than I was .

It was considered illegal, but I still took home 18 dollars a day .

To a 14-year-old, that was a huge sum, and it was also much higher than what other industries were paying .

I'll tell you briefly about the mining procedures . It's not as simple as planting and digging .

We wore a full set of uniform that was prepared by the company .

I was young at that time so even the smallest size was a tad too big for me .

We wore uniforms not because it was dirty down there, but because our own clothes might produce friction and static electricity, causing sparks or gas that leads to an explosion .

I hated the boots the most . They were similar to rain boots but thicker, stiffer and more unbreathable . Our leader would not let us enter the mine if we do not put them on, so I had no other choice .

For every 10 miners, there was a leader . My leader was another big kid from my village . His name is Dahai .

He was very meticulous in many aspects .

He would constantly remind us to bring our mine light, something that I absolutely hated . We already had a headlight attached to our helmet so the lamp was unnecessary in my opinion . ”Wait 'til something happens,” Dahai would repeat .

We weren't allowed to bring any electrical equipment down to the site to prevent explosions . Dahai would get annoyed when reminding us about it because some workers would secretly bring their phones along to check for messages or the time .

Dahai enjoyed working with me since I had no money for a phone so he had no need to worry .

Dahai often emphasized that safety was the priority and that prevention was better than cure . These were things he memorized from the manual, but the higher-ups liked it so Dahai quickly got promoted . By my first month, he had already become a leader .

Dahai would often play a hilarious guide video from his phone to educate us . He would also show us a video about an explosion that was triggered by a mobile phone in a gas station .

For a long time, I had thought that the videos were given to him by his manager and that they might be fake . I couldn't understand how an invisible fire could lead to an explosion . It might have been a coincidence, and another colleague mentioned the possibility of photoshop .

Dahai would replay the video and warn us not to bring electrical devices down before we enter the mine . It had become a standard procedure .

Everyone would get dressed and proceed down .

We had to take a lift made from iron panels, and we liked to call it the elevator cage .

Whenever the lift door closed, we would feel like cats or dogs that had been locked up . A colleague would often chime, ”Down and up goes the elevator cage and a day is over . Down goes the elevator cage but not up, and our lives are over . ”

I remember thinking that we could start work immediately after descending, but I soon realized that that wasn't the case . Entering the mine was only the first step, we still had to walk over 10 kilometers upon landing .

My colleagues explained that our mine was different from others . There were paths that required what we call a monkey car .