Daily Life in China                  

Bronze Mine:

Two thousand year old bronze mine in Daye, (close to Huangshi). A national level exibit and a treasure but tucked away in a city not many go to visit.  There's not much there but mines and procesing plants plus the exibit is in a very tough location to find.

The layer shown is just below the old mine surface.  There are lots of tight crawl spaces going to the shafts which extend down to 60 meters.  The problems of mine water and ventilation were solved at this time for the first time. Small 14 inch pieces of bamboo were used for light.  Basically they worked in the dark.

The square area are openings for downward shafts.

Note the water drain line to the lower right.  The lines would run through the mine level to a sump hold where it was lifted out by hand with buckets and hand winches.

Replica of a 2000 years old winch.  See modern system below.

This guy is getting a load of bricks to a worker down in a shaft.  This is a typical setup I see allover the place i.e. in new building construction in any city - modern building footing preperation.  At times they'll winch the guy up, set off a charge of dynamite then he goes back down and sends up the debris.  That's done over and over until the desired depth gets reached.  I watched this many times in many places.  There currently doing the same thing near my apartment.  Like in the photo below typically they'll have farm women running the winches.  They stay there all day lifting up debris and sending down an empty.

At times you can see 20 women and winches preping footings.