[Special Article 122] From "Black Gold Age" to "Golden Age"
As it approaches November, Wu Yuanshao has to wander around his grove of more than 200 navel oranges several times a day-the closer he gets to picking the fruit, the more he can't sit still.
He lost his wife in his early years and had no children. The navel orange tree in front of and behind the house became the most important concern of the 68-year-old Wu Yuanshao.
At this time, looking from a height, Xinghua Village where Wu Yuanshao lived was covered with navel orange fruits.
Only with the guidance of the villagers, outsiders can see the bare mountain.
They are hidden in a golden patch, but once they are found, they are particularly eye-catching.
This is the mark left by mining and gold panning over the past few decades.
Chitu She Nationality Township in Nankang District, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, was once more prosperous and bustling than the county town because of its abundance of tungsten ore and gold.
But when the mineral resources are depleted day by day, many villages, including Xinghua Village, have to face the huge wounds that brutal mining has left the human settlements.
mining
Rao Fengti's home still retains a few fist-sized ore.
The surface of the ore is black and shiny, with a few white lines.
"The white lines are stones. Remove them, and what's left is tungsten ore." 55-year-old Rao Fengti was a little shy, but when it came to the days of mining in the past, he said more.
There are tungsten mines in Chitu Township.
Long before the founding of New China, this was widely known to people in southern Jiangxi.
In the era of planned economy, the Nankang Tungsten Mine was established in the area for mining.
"At first, some people were allowed to mine to earn work points. Later, the mining rights were gradually released, and more and more people came." said Luo Hengping, secretary of Chitu Village. At that time, the three most remote villages in the township attracted the most mining army.
"The chickens crow in one village, and the three counties hear about it." The three villages are located at the junction of the three counties (districts) of Nankang, Chongyi, and Dayu, and are the most abundant place in the local tungsten mine.
The Xindi Formation, where Rao Fengti has lived since childhood, is the most concentrated area of tungsten mines in Sancun.
From Rao Fengti's memory, people pass by his door with tools every morning, "all are mining in the mountains."
The Rao family has many children and the conditions at home are difficult. Since elementary school, Rao Fengti often followed his family to pick up waste mines after school.
Some of the "waste mines" are missed by the miners, and some are discarded if they are not pure enough.
Some people go to the village to recycle waste mines, and bid one to two yuan per catty, "picking a summer vacation, you can earn back the tuition for the next semester."
Such a cost-effective "work" is rare in rural areas.
After finishing the fourth grade of elementary school, Rao Fengti dropped out of school full-time mining.
A pair of dark and rough hands is proof of his senior "miner".
"There are no trees in the mountains and plains, all people." Rao Fengti's nephew Rao Xiaoming was born in the craziest mining period in Chitu Township in the 1980s. "At that time, the surrounding mountains of the village were covered with straw and wooden sheds. Thousands of people live there all year round." The purity of the ore excavated varies, and the selling price is also very different.
Rao Xiaoming has seen someone dig a valuable mine and stay by the side of the hole every night, "for fear of being robbed by others".
Wu Yuanshao, who was in his 30s at the time, was a member of the mining army.
In order to mine, he lived in a simple shed on Sancun Mountain for 7 years, and rarely returned to Xinghua Village except for the holidays.
"That dilapidated gray building is the original grain control station, and the small red house next to it is the old movie theater." Walking along the road in Sancun Village, Rao Fengti pointed to the "old sites" everywhere.
Popularity has brought excitement and prosperity. In the era when the national material level was generally low, in addition to movie theaters and grain control stations, the three villages also had their own hospitals, shopping malls and schools.
On a fixed day each month, villagers from surrounding towns and villages will go to the three villages to drive the polder, "it is more like a county seat than Nankang County at that time." Luo Hengping said.
Even Rao Fengti's life-long events are led by tungsten mines.
Lai Huaxiu, 56 years old, was originally from Jingba Town, Nankang District. He came to Sancun with his uncle who was mining, and met Rao Fengti, where he eventually got married and had children.
"Married to three villages at that time is like marrying someone who has a mine at home." Lai Xiuhua said that at that time many girls from other villages married into Chitu Township. "The presence of minerals means that living conditions will not be bad. "
Gold Rush
There are also a few rusted mining tools placed in the corner of Rao's house.
Pickaxes, hammers, and mine baskets are so simple that it is difficult to associate them with mining.
"Farmers mining is very simple!" Rao Fengti said, as long as you find the seedlings, you can dig along with it. "If it is not easy to dig, use explosives."
When you are lucky, you can harvest several hundred catties a day.
The sound of exploding mountains was once the background sound of the lives of the residents of the three villages.
Zhong Xiaohua, a villager of the Hongtaoling Group, remembers that once, because of the excessive power of explosives, her windows were shattered.
Mineral resources are limited. Coupled with the "cutting mountain bark" mining method, in the 1990s, the tungsten mine in Sancun became more and more difficult to dig.
So some people upgraded their equipment. Small crushers, mills, and shakers began to become essential tools for mining; others turned their attention to another local mineral resource-gold.
"Da'a's cattle and horses are the gold of the terracotta, the porcelain of Zishan's soy sauce Qili, and the mushrooms of the Yangcun and the tea blue lamp of Kuantian." In this folk song about the special products of Gannanwei Town, the gold of Chitu Township is among them.
According to Luo Henping, according to legend, the gold in the terracotta riverbed is like pepper seeds, and "terracotta" is also named after it.
"In the past, people didn't know where the gold was or how to mine it, so they always listened to folk songs as a joke." Luo Hengping said that when the tungsten mining fever reached its peak, some gold mining companies gradually came to Terracotta to try to mine gold.
As news of gold unearthed continued to spread, many villagers who had broken their halberds in tungsten mines quickly plunged into the gold rush.
Xinghua Village’s tungsten mines are not as good as Sancun’s, but gold resources are relatively abundant.
At the age of 15, Hu Chaozhong, who had not graduated from junior high school, dropped out and followed his brothers to find gold. "At that time, in the eyes of many people, it seemed unimportant whether to go to school or not, just make money."
At the beginning, gold diggers all gathered near the terracotta river, "block a short section of the river, drain the water, and then dig up the sand at the bottom of the river." The river couldn't be dug out, and he switched to the rice fields.
Later, gold panning boats drove into the Celadon River to pump sand, crushed the sand with ball mill stones and added mercury to select gold.
Hu Chaozhong said that private gold panning is generally formed by forming a small group with relatives and friends in the village, and when the panning is reached, everyone will share it together. "At most, 40 or 50 grams will be panned out a day, and not many of them are split up."
The economic benefits of mining and gold mining are gradually decreasing, but the huge damage caused by barbaric mining has just begun to show its face.
For many years, the villagers in the three villages have not seen green.
Either for the purpose of digging tungsten mines or for burning wood, the vegetation on the mountains was cut down, and all of them were messy loess and bare rocks.
The Chitu River, which flows through the entire township, originated from Sancun. Whenever it rains, a large amount of soil is carried into the river by rainwater, and it is muddy from upstream to downstream.
Therefore, Chitu River has the nickname "Little Yellow River".
"Rice fields along the river cannot be planted. In the worst case, the river water is all mud and cannot be used for irrigation at all." Luo Hengping said.
Zhong Xiaohua heard from the older generation that clear mountain spring water would pop up in many places in Hongtaoling.
But after she married into the Hongtaoling Group, she never saw the mountain spring water. "I heard people say that it was because the mining emptied the ground."
A more serious problem than river water becoming muddy and spring water disappearing is that water quality becomes poisonous.
Rao Xiaoming said that in the past, many enterprises and villagers used sulfuric acid and mercury when processing and purifying tungsten ore and gold. Wastewater containing a large amount of toxic chemical substances was directly discharged into the Chishui River. “The consequence is that the mercury content of the river water exceeds the standard and the water is irrigated. No one dared to eat the food."
"You can often see fish and shrimps in the water, and the villagers just carry water home for cooking and cooking." Wu Yuanshao's childhood clear Chishui River was destroyed by the mining and gold rush in which he personally participated. Up.
scar
The terracotta mountain area covers more than 12,000 hectares, accounting for more than half of the total area of the township. It is known as "eight mountains, one river and half fields, half roads and manors".
The land is small and the population is large, and the mountains are backed by mountains. Tungsten ore and gold have become the hope of the local people to improve their lives, but they have also blinded their eyes.
"Our group of people do not adapt to the countryside or the city." Zhu Yinghua, 50, was born and raised in Nankang Tungsten Mine. His grandparents and father are all employees of the mine.
In the 1990s, Zhu Yinghua caught up with the recruitment after graduating from high school and became the last group of employees recruited by Nankang Tungsten Mine. "At that time, the quality and quantity of tungsten ore were not as good as before, and the factory began to decline."
Within a few years, Zhu Yinghua left the tungsten mine to work.
He has been to Guangdong, Fujian and other places, but because of his low education, most of the time he can only do odd jobs in labor-intensive companies such as carton factories and auto parts factories.
"The richest people in Nankang are mostly terracotta people, and most of those doing the hardest work are terracotta people." This sentence circulating in southern Jiangxi is two true portrayals of terracotta people after the mining and gold rush era, but the former. The number is scarce, but the latter is large.
The two generations born in the 70s and the 80s are the two most "special" generations in Chitu Township.
"When they were young, they were catching up with the mining and gold rush boom. In order to improve their family life a little, many people went to the mountains to dig after a few years of schooling." said Wu Jinqing, deputy head of Chitu Township, when the tungsten mines and gold mines were exhausted. At that time, these people were in their 30s and 40s. They had "neither culture nor technology, and they were still under the pressure of life of the whole family."
In the 1990s, the furniture industry in Nankang District began to develop and has now become a local business card.
Wu Jinqing and others have conducted a survey. The fewest bosses in the furniture industry are from Chitu Township. “They missed the opportunity to start the industry. Many people can only do physical work like furniture movers.”
Naturally, the revenge against people is far from over.
Before the implementation of the remediation, residents around Chitu River were more likely to suffer from calculus disease than in other areas. “Every year for medical checkups, there are always young people who cannot fulfill military dreams because of unqualified liver and kidney functions. Women of childbearing age in the valley have difficulty getting pregnant, and the abortion rate is obviously lower. High.” This made Lan Yongqing, the secretary of the township party committee who was originally a Terracotta, very distressed: “The barbaric mining caused not only the pain, but also the scars that have been hard to fade for many years. Although the water quality of the Chitu River has been greatly improved, it has a great impact on the environment and The damage caused by the villagers will take a long time to repair."
In 2019, Zhu Yinghua, who had been wandering for more than 20 years, returned to the location of the Nankang Tungsten Mine and raised bees.
"My family moved here many years ago, but there is no land. The mine is gone. I am like a'black household'." Zhu Yinghua was joking, but his expression was a bit bitter-like many tungsten mine workers in the past. Similarly, for many years, he has been very confused about life.
Shut down
Zeng Xiaohui wore a straw hat and swiftly shuttled through the large navel orange garden.
He is a well-known "soil expert" in Chitu Township-just by looking at the leaves, he can judge the state of the navel orange tree in front of him.
17 years ago, Zeng Xiaohui, who had been discharged from the army, returned to Sancun and was the first to plant a navel orange tree on a barren mountain.
Villagers who are accustomed to living in mines and river sand seem to have encountered a rare event, "In Chitu Township, there have been no people planting trees for many years!"
That was around 2003, and the miners and gold diggers who had flowed to Chitu Township like a tide went back like a tide.
But for the locals, the few mineral deposits left are still straws they want to hold on to.
At that time, some private owners contracted mines and drove large-scale machinery up the mountain, which caused a small boom in mining for a while.
This has become the last madness of tungsten mining in Chitu Township.
In 2005, the Chitu Township Government was determined to manage the Chitu River.
"Power cuts, strict control of explosives, severe punishment of unauthorized mountain explosions... I have thought of a lot of ways." Luo Hengping participated in many rectification operations, "the effect is not good."
As a native of Terracotta, Luo Hengping knows that to improve the environment, the most fundamental thing is to completely prohibit mining.
"But most of the villagers near the mine rely on this to support their families, and banning mining will cut their livelihoods."
The tug of war lasted for 10 years.
By 2015, according to the data from Nankang District, there are 2 tungsten mines, 3 smelters, 35 shakers, 283 mining sites, 19 mining equipment, 4 quarries, and 26 illegal mines in Chitu Township. battlefield.
In the same year, the Nankang District Committee and the district government transferred more than ten departments including public security, environmental protection, water conservancy, forestry, and mining management to support Chitu Township, and formed a special rectification team of more than 100 people with rural cadres to mobilize local people and migrant workers. Hundreds of people began to rectify the mining industry that has been maintaining for more than 30 years.
Luo Hengping was also assigned to participate in the rectification action, "mainly doing ideological work for the villagers." During those months, Luo Hengping set out to go up the mountain early in the morning, eating some self-provided dry food at noon, and went down the mountain until dark.
“Everyone complained at the beginning.” Rao Xiaoming, who had worked as a foreign worker for several years, just returned to Sancun. “Once mining stops, the mining equipment someone bought at a high price can only be sold as scrap iron. For many villagers, mining has always been the only source of livelihood."
"Tungsten mines will be emptied one day". When visiting the mountains, Luo Hengping said the most, and it was this sentence that finally convinced the Terracotta-this is something everyone knows but never wants to face fact.
"Mining has caused great damage to the environment. We should bear this responsibility." Sitting in front of his uncle Rao Fengti's house, Rao Xiaoming muffled.
Demolition of grass sheds, demolition of wooden houses, closure of illegal mining sites, smelters, destruction of machine tools, stone presses and other equipment... After more than four months of dragnet rectification, the mining industry in Chitu Township finally came to an end.
At the same time, Nankang District also promulgated the "Long-term Management Measures for the Environmental Maintenance of the Chitu River Basin", with an annual investment of 300,000 yuan to establish a 20-person inspection and law enforcement team, and also hired 10 full-time inspectors locally. Regular inspections of mines and rivers were carried out, and illegal mining activities were found to be stopped immediately.
In 2017, Ganzhou City became the first batch of pilot projects for ecological protection and restoration of landscapes, forests, fields, lakes and grasses in China, and the systematic restoration and comprehensive management of landscapes, forests, fields, lakes and grasses in Chitu Township also started.
Nowadays, walking on the village road of the Xindi Group, you can still see the caves dug by the roadside. The entrance of the cave is full of weeds. Occasionally, people’s sight of houses that have not been completely demolished appear in people’s sight. At that time, there was mud flowing down the mountain.
The "black gold" that was once held up to the sky finally only left such a mark on this land.
When tungsten mining was completely banned, Zeng Xiaohui's navel orange orchard had grown to a large scale.
In the autumn and winter seasons, the contiguous golden yellow fruits are a scene of the three villages.
Zeng Xiaohui was elected as the secretary of the Three Villages Village Branch based on the hard-working and down-to-earth style he cultivated in the army, coupled with his warm-hearted character.
Many of the villagers who smashed their old rice bowls took their first navel orange seedlings from Zeng Xiaohui and tried to pick up new rice bowls.
newborn
Like Rao Fengti's wife, Lai Huaxiu, Zhong Xiaohua is also a foreigner who married into the three villages because of a coal mine.
She and her husband worked in the mines for 7 years. “Mining can make money, but later, the environment in the village gets worse. In the end, even the freshly laundered clothes don’t dare to be exposed outside the house-it’s all ash.”
In 2012, Zhong Xiaohua, who went out to work because of the exhaustion of mineral resources, returned to Hongtaoling and planted the first batch of 400 navel oranges.
Over the past eight years, her navel orange orchard has expanded to 1,000 fruit trees. Last year, she harvested more than 20,000 catties of fruit, with a gross income of more than 60,000 yuan.
"It's not less than earning a part-time job outside, and I can take care of my family with free time."
Due to the abundant mountain resources, the navel orange industry has become the backbone of the Hongtaoling Group. Half of the 500 villagers in the group stay at home to play navel orange trees.
However, the road from the "black gold" industry to the "golden" industry has not been smooth sailing.
A few years ago, the navel orange orchards in several villages in Chitu Township were ravaged by Huanglong Disease. In the three villages alone, two-thirds of the diseased trees were cut down or isolated.
With reduced production and quality of navel oranges, coupled with increased resistance encountered by traditional sales channels, in those few years, the villagers who looked forward to it suffered a heavy economic blow.
Zeng Xiaohui was too anxious.
With the support of relevant departments in Nankang District and Chitu Township, the three villages invited agricultural and forestry experts to carry out training on navel orange planting techniques for villagers from time to time, and planted navel orange trees in a more scientific and reasonable way.
On the other hand, the three village committees and the two committees uniformly designed packaging cartons for the navel oranges in the village, and sold navel oranges through various channels such as short video platforms and Moments.
Speaking of the upcoming harvest season, Zhong Xiaohua's words are full of anticipation, "This year's growth is not worrying, and the market is not worrying, just waiting for a good price."
According to incomplete statistics, in the current three villages, the planting area of navel oranges is about 900 mu, the annual output of navel oranges is about 450,000 kg, and the sales are about 3 million yuan.
Looking around, the mountains where you could only see people have been re-covered with vegetation.
While steadily developing the navel orange industry, Sancun also introduced yellow peaches originally produced in Yanling, Hunan, striving to create another brand of fruit.
"In the past, mining for gold was "backing on mountains and eating mountains". Now the development of industry is still on "backing on mountains and eating mountains", but the way of eating is different!" After not panning for gold, Hu Chaozhong became the director of Xinghua Village. Under his leadership, the village passed The villagers’ land was transferred to develop industries such as navel orange, greenhouse vegetables, camellia, grapes, medicinal materials, and crayfish.
To help villagers sell agricultural products, Xinghua Village also set up an e-commerce service station.
Li Bingjun, deputy secretary of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of the Ganzhou Municipal Party Committee, pointed out that we must attach importance to the construction of ecological civilization as much as we attach importance to poverty alleviation, and place ecological environmental protection in an overwhelming position.
The changes in Chitu Township are the epitome of the implementation of the "two mountains" theory in Ganzhou in recent years, coordinating the contradiction between "eating mountains" and "protecting green", and seeking green development.
Ganzhou is known as the "World Tungsten Capital" and "Rare Earth Kingdom". However, long-term disorderly development in the past has caused environmental damage, soil erosion and watershed pollution.
How to protect the lives of people in the corresponding areas while improving the environment is not an easy question to answer.
Compared with Hongtaoling in the same village, the Xindi Formation is quite deserted.
After mining was completely banned, the air in Xindi was fresher and the river was clear. However, due to the lack of natural conditions for planting fruit trees, Rao Fengti regained his ancestors' way of making a living-planting rice.
"This kind of land can't retain young people, nor can it support young people. What should we do in the future of Xindi?" Rao Xiaoming said that at most, only 30 of the more than 300 people in the group stayed at home.
His confusion is also the confusion of many people in places similar to the situation in Xindi.
"Maybe it can develop the breeding industry." "Black household" Zhu Yinghua has long regarded Xindi as his hometown.
He heard from his parents that in the 1950s, in the mountain stream at the source of the Chitu River, there was a baby fish.
Although this statement is difficult to verify, "but if the new land is suitable for breeding, it can solve the problem of lack of land and development."
After the "Black Gold Era", how Chitu Township should seek the next step of development, many people have different answers, but the premise of protecting the ecological environment has become the most basic consensus of everyone.
"Those are the waste materials left over during the mining period. Now related companies are processing them and finally making them into construction materials and transporting them out of the mountain." Looking at the roaring waste treatment plant in the distance, Wu Jinqing exclaimed, "Mining can be done overnight. It may take several generations of efforts to dig out the vegetation of the entire mountain in time, but to restore everything to the original state."
Lu Xiang