Anyuan National Mining Park

Anyuan National Mining Park

Anyuan National Mining Park is a national key cultural relics protection unit.

This is the result of hundreds of millions of years of natural evolution.

This is a place where the wind rises and clouds surge.

Here also dawned China’s modern industrial civilization, staging a vivid drama of the rise of national industry.

Here also the Chinese proletariat raised the banner, embarking on an arduous and epic expedition to overthrow 0.

When the first rays of sunlight in 2012 shone upon this land full of stories, we arrived here — Anyuan National Mining Park (currently under application and pending approval) — to take a century-long retrospective look…

Entering Anyuan, standing atop the lofty Niuxing Ridge, three iconic “viewpoints” catch our eye: the towering gangue mountain, the majestic Shenggong Ancestral Hall, and the magnificent Anyuan Railway and Mining Workers’ Movement Memorial Hall. The gangue mountain, piled up with the blood and sweat of coal miners, seems as if every black stone possesses resilient life, making one sense the tremendous strength of generations of Anyuan workers in propelling the rise of national industry. The Shenggong Ancestral Hall, with its European-style architecture of arched windows and doors, feels as if every weathered grey brick is deep in contemplation over the rise and fall of the Pingxiang Coal Mine Bureau, allowing visitors to hear the impassioned cries of Sheng Xuanhuai and Zhang Zhidong, leaders of the late Qing Dynasty’s Westernization Movement, as they advocated for the rise of national industry. The Anyuan Railway and Mining Workers’ Movement Memorial Hall, with its towering emblem of a “sky wheel and axe,” seems as if the wheel is turning and the axe is swinging, evoking visions of the grand scenes of production and resistance by Anyuan railway and mining workers in those years.

Covering an area of 26.3 square kilometers, this mining park features 10 core landscapes (zones) and 75 scenic spots (viewpoints), including Gaokeng Big Pit and Little Golden Hill, the Anyuan General Tunnel, the Anyuan Railway and Mining Workers’ Consumer Cooperative, the Public Affairs Building (Negotiation Building), the site of the Autumn Harvest Uprising Military Conference, and Mao Zedong’s former residence at Bafangjing… Gaokeng Big Pit is where the essence of the Anyuan mining park’s character is most concentrated. The towering headframe, huge hoist, overhead trolley wires, deep shafts, as well as slogans and buildings bearing historical imprints, all easily bring to mind those passionate and fiery years. The industrial heritage value of the Gaokeng Big Pit coal mine continues to grow with time. Not long ago, CCTV reporters also came here, using their lenses to trace the glorious era created by the people of Anyuan.

This is the stormy and unyielding Anyuan National Mining Park.

This is the bittersweet Anyuan National Mining Park.

This is the Anyuan National Mining Park that harbors a spiritual treasure trove of everlasting significance.