A Poor Chinese Family Works a Home Made Coal Mine

Coal mining has always been a dangerous occupation.  Cave ins explosions, and flooding have claimed the lives of thousands of coal miners.

In the modern era there have been many cave ins in which hundreds of miners have been trapped underground. Modern Chinese coal mines do not have a good safety record.

However, as bad as being a coal miner in modern China may be, it must be many times better than life for the coal miner in the early 1900’s, when coal miners had to descend into dark tunnels dug by hand with no electrical lighting.

In old China, many coal mines were essentially backyard affairs worked by several generations of the same families. These crude tunnels provided a livelihood for the family and also no doubt claimed many of its members.

In the picture attached to the post, one can see the primitive coal minining techniques that existed in Yun-Nan region of China around 1911.
Coal was abundant in many parts of Yün-nan, though production is small and methods of mining were very crude. The picture shows the tunnel leading underground.