The Kuangshan Mines 矿山厂 in Huize District 会泽县

The mines appear in Qing records, but appear insignificant. Zinc mines reportedly were close-by or used the same workings. Late Qing attempts at reviving the industry brought the Japanese mining engineer Yamaguchi Yoshikatsu 山口义胜 to the mines, who first documented a considerable historical scale of the exploitations. Recent industrial records reflect a massive scale of historic mining on this site.

 

Fieldwork by Nanny Kim, Yang Yuda, and Li Xiaocen, 2014.8.22.-23., supported by Mr. Gui Shengfu 胜负, a Manager of Yunnan Chihong Zinc and Chromium Corporation 云南驰宏锌铬股份有限公司

We reached Zhehai before noon and met Mr. Gui Shengfu. He offered to put us up at the company guesthouse, so that we could spend the first afternoon at the Kuangshan Mines and go to the Woqian Mines 倭铅厂 the following day. Mr Gui is his late thirties, Muslim Chinese and from Kuangshan town. His family used to be involved in mining and caravan transport, he was quite knowledgeable about Zhehai.

We left Zhehai about 2 pm and first drove up to the main ore dressing plant, at about 2300 m, where we met Mr. Hou 侯, the plant manager. They first took us to the Qilin Mines 麒麟厂, a zinc mine that has been in operation since the 1980s (?). The site is beyond the ridge in the Niulanjiang valley, on a precipitous slope at over 60°. Mr. Gui and Mr. Hou confirmed that they know of no premodern mining traces here. Across the river on the Guizhou side is a site called Yinchang (Silver Mine), located on a ledge above the river, at about 2000 m. No historic exploitation was known to them for that site, either.

Ks 01 Niulan
The valley of the Niulanjiang

We doubled back to the main plant and some way down and west to two open pits, separated by the embankment of a driving track. Mr. Gui exploined that the original ridge continued in a straight line from the southwestern knob across the present pit to the ridge above.

The area occupied by the pit is some 5000 m2, and the depth from the top of the ridge about 200 m. The pit was originally exploited by the state company, but work ceased around 1990. Exploitation by locals using traditional mining techniques and low-level mechanization continues. Mr. Gui and Mr. Hou pointed out altogether five layers, that are in part recognizeable in the pit wall. They told us that the topmost layer, and the zone some 40-50 m into the second layer where riddled with old galleries. Timbering was from pine trunks not over 10 cm in diameter. It appeared hardly decayed. Mining adits either descended gradually or formed steps from layer to layer.

Ks 02 Pit
The lower pit. The knob above the pit is the former height of the ridge.

Ks 03 Pit
View towards the higher ridge across the upper pit, showing some traces of mines, that might be either old or recent illegal exploitations.

Ks 06
View from the pits across to the company buildings. The ridge behind the buildings directly descends to the Niulanjiang.

Mr. Gui pointed out the location of the former Longwang Temple (Dragon King) just to the east of the mining area, now a newly washed out gully next to a still working private zinc smelting plant. He stated that the gully had also been a site of historical mining.

Ks 04
The gully before the remainder of the mountain flank at the pit.

Ks 05a
Detail of the eroded rock, showing a band of greenish and darkish crumbly rock between massive reddish layers.

At the next side valley further up the valley is a large burial ground. It is by now mostly destroyed by grave robbers who had been most active in the 1990s. We took a closer look a handful of still intact grave stelea. The oldest stele is the grave of a couple, with the husband’s dates QL15/7/9-JQ23/6/12 (1750-1818), and the wife’s QL 32/3/26-DG6/3/19 (1767-1826). Most but not all graves are Muslim Chinese.

Ks 07a
Scattered remains on the cemetery slope.

Mr. Gui had heard of a Longwang Temple and a mosque in the area, but of no other temples of guild halls. The mosque used to be located on the same slope as the temple, close to the grave area but higher up, probably used to be a small promontory overlooking the side valley. Some 40-60 m of the original surface have been removed in connection with the open pit mining, therefore hard to tell.

Ks 07b Mosque-s
View down the valley from the cemetery slope. The mosque would have been where the new dump is now.

The stream in the Kuangshan valley cuts its bed through compact layers of slags. According to Mr. Gui, the layers that still form the bottom of the stream are the oldest slags. At the point where we got to the stream, four layers were discernible: The top layer is now about 80cm thick, but unevenly washed away, which means that it may have been thicker. The next lower layer is thin, more compounded and made up of slags blacker in colour. The lowest visible layer is a mixture of bricks, slags and other materials. Li Xiaocen took some samples for analysis.

Ks 08 Stream
The stream with its eroded bank.

Ks 08a Layers
Slag layers exposed by water erosion.

Mr. Gui told us that when he was a child, the stream valley used to be filled completely with slags, almost all the way down to Zhehai town. At Laohuzui 老虎嘴 near the lower end of the valley, three dams were built across the valley in the late 1970s to retain the slags. Locals were permitted to collected slags only below the dams. The slag layers behind the dams used to reach depths of 10 m. Re-exploitation began in the Republican period and lasted to 1994, with the 1970s to 1994 the most intensive phase. Smelting was mainly for lead, secondarily for zinc.

Mr. Gui and Mr. Hou then remembered that about 30 years ago they used to know a relatively large grave behind the small town Kuangshanzhen. We drove down to the nearby town and the explained it would be on the small ridge. According to their memory of what locals had deciphered from the inscription, it the term eunuch 太监 appeared. This would date the grave to the Ming period. It was unfortunately too late in the day to start looking for the site.

 

2014.8.22.

Woqiancun 倭铅村 is the first village on the road to Daibu, about 18 km from Zhehai and after the first ascent from the plateau. The old road probably differed from the motor road on the ascent, but joined in the approach to the village. A washed out gully opened below the lower end of the village, displaying slag layers at least 7 m thick. According to Mr. Gui, the slag dumps used to fill the valley to a depth of about 10 m. In the 1990s, local re-smelting had been widespread, using the traditional method of clay distillation pipes. Pipes in fact were stacked up as walls in many places. Success apparently was limited and the industry has since been abandoned. He showed us the upper end of the slag dumps where the hills narrow the valley. The slags extend from the upper end of the present village up both slopes to well below the lower end of the village. The total extension is about 1 km along the valley and up to 0.5 km across at wider upper end. The surrounding red soil is planted with maize, while the more compact slag dumps are barren. According to Mr. Gui the village used to be famous for its carrots, which were planted in the slag soil.

Ks 10
Gully at the lower end of the village where slags have been dug up, also the main site of recent re-smelting.

Ks 11
Detail of slag layer, probably old.

Ks 13
detail of slag layer, probably recent.

Mr. Gui was positive that no mines were known around the site, that the slags were from zinc smelting, and that the ore was from the Kuangshan Mines. He did not know why the smelting of silver-lead ores and of zinc ores used to be performed at different sites, but confirmed that coal was mined at Yulu 雨碌 south some 15 km along the road.

Results: The findings confirm historical records that differentiate between the Zhehai zinc mines and the Kuangshan Mines. Huang Mengju (1849) recorded that the zinc mines where one day stage from Huize and one from the Kuangshan Mines. The information on time requirements for travel and transport is in agreement with the visited sites. We can thus conclude that Woqianchang was a zinc smelting site and that the location was at 1 day stage from the mines so as to reduce the distance of coal transports. (Zinc distillation smelting was the only metallurgical process that by using coal had become independent from charcoal).

The zinc mines of Zhehai are documented with high probability in the 1720s and with certainty by the 1740. Zinc outputs were considerable and supplied the Dongchuan mint, while silver outputs appear negligible in the records. The presence of massive amounts of slags of both lead and zinc smelting is positive evidence of continuous, large-scale exploitation of both silver and zinc, which certainly lasted from the early 18th to the mid-19th century, and possibly began much earlier.

Last edited by: SV
Latest Revision: 2018-07-18
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