My tiny relatives are far away at the foot of Mount Shang
They are sick and covered with dust
How much of my middle age I cut down
How much their old age will be extended
I have three tons of explosives in my body
They are the fuse part
Just last night
I exploded like a rock on the ground
–Chen Nianxi, “The Explosion
(In March 2020, Chen Nianxi, a “miner-poet” from Shaanxi Province, was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis, with an incubation period of 17 years)
Yang Mao of Xiangyang Village felt that something was wrong with his body, and did not dare to talk to others about it until he accidentally caught a small cold, which could not be controlled by medication and injections, and developed into a high fever that did not go away, and no cure worked.
The doctor took the white film and said, “The lungs are flat, the most live three years. “
“This year is the third year. ” Yang Mao said.
Born in 1986, Yang Mao is the youngest pneumoconiosis patient in Xiangyang Village, Chaiping Town, Zhenan County, Shaanxi Province. Most of his lung membranes are black as charcoal and hard as a rock. Every time he exhaled and inhaled, a raspy hiss stretched out from his throat.
In April 2021, 12 years ago, “open-chest lung test” Zhang Hechao incident among local officials accepting bribes in the news on the hot search. The village of Xiangyang, located deep in the Qinling Mountains, was once again in the spotlight. This is a typical pneumoconiosis gathering place, with more than 3,000 people in the village and hundreds of strong laborers suffering from pneumoconiosis. Over the years, the village has been the focus of several rounds of media coverage on the pneumoconiosis community.
After explaining Yang Mao’s situation, the volunteer from the charity organization who visited the household spoke in a calm tone and identified the farming families he had helped: the family whose elder brother had just passed away, leaving behind two dolls who were still studying and just left; the family who had only two parents left to depend on each other and live a hard life; and the family whose daughter-in-law had remarried and moved out, and whose ancestral house had collapsed and become half a dangerous house.
According to the “Survey Report on Migrant Workers with Pneumoconiosis in China (2019)” research released by the charity organization Big Love Clean Dust, since the 1980s, “dust-related jobs” The number of “dust-related jobs” spurted up and peaked in 1999. According to the estimation of the disease cycle, the average time of death of this group of miners is 20 years later – apparently, this point is now.
- Torture
At the end of his life, Fang Yong of Xiangyang Village could barely rest on his bed. Instinct drove him to kneel on both knees and lean forward with his upper body so that his ribs could relax a bit and turn out the few remaining air bubbles in his two lungs, hissing and squirming. However, no matter how much the abdomen undulates and swells, the air is still not supplied.
Cai Qian Yao is 45 years old, he is eager to suck a mouthful of oxygen canister, the hospital’s canister oxygen concentration is higher, but a day and a night a standing canister consumption, far more than the economy can afford. Only during the period when he had to be hospitalized urgently, he could open up his horsepower and enjoy the luxury of a pure oxygen tank.
The most unbearable thing was the inability to get a full night’s sleep. Cai Qian Yao stacked pillows and quilts on top of the bed, straightened his back and squinted twice, then had to find ways to roll over, turn his shoulders sideways and slightly change positions. They spend the whole night fiddling with their bodies in exchange for a moment of peace and quiet.
In 2015, the pneumoconiosis patients in Chaiping Town sought help on Weibo to draw attention to the outside world, and celebrity charity workers and public welfare foundations have long been concerned about the patients here. Deep in the mountains here, the arable land is barren, and several villages have men working in the mines in almost every household.
In the words of Yu Yifu, a villager who has the disease, he is basically waiting to die. He was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis in 2001 and was able to walk normally at the time of the Beijing Olympics, but after that he was bedridden and lay in that cramped bedroom for more than a decade, becoming the longest surviving patient in ten miles and eight villages. In the last two or three years, he had a feeling that his time was coming, and he had several pneumothoraxes, and complications such as pulmonary heart disease, pulmonary alveoli, and emphysema followed.
Surviving is a torment. A few years ago, he asked his family to buy a coffin for himself in advance and put it under the window of the hall, looking at it from the hospital bed. Eat, drink, pull up and take a nap in the house, the whole day can only hunch over and stare at the ground, “can not go anywhere, like sitting in prison. Long-term lack of oxygen, no strength, can only eat liquid food, a meal of work tired forehead sweat. Nutrition can not keep up, thin skin and bones, pants legs hanging down empty.
Some people can not stand this crime, head into the river ditch, died. Big Love Clean Dust set up a rehabilitation center for pneumoconiosis patients in Chaiping Town in 2018, and Xiong Qizhi, a volunteer at the center, roughly counted five or six tragic cases of pneumoconiosis patients around Chaiping Town who sought their own death because they could not bear the pain of the cone.
Wang Qianrong, who had stage three pneumoconiosis, died from drinking pesticides, and his wife also passed away years ago, leaving three children who were studying to become orphans. “I couldn’t breathe, and my body cried out in pain. Before his death, Wang Qianrong’s son dropped out of school and returned home to care for him at his bedside, but no matter how much care, it could not relieve the pain.
2、Conflict
Because of the long years of living, Yu Yifu has become a comforting straw for the hearts of the sick, neighbors occasionally come over to walk around and inquire about the two ears of the law to save their lives. “I can have what experience, live a day for a day”, watching each other cheer old acquaintances are few left. “Every once in a while, we hear who has died”.
Breaking his fingers, he woodenly reported out a string of numbers. In an administrative village of more than 3,000 people, there were more than 100 villagers who had pneumoconiosis. Of the dozen or so sick people in their village group, six or seven have passed away.
According to the analysis of Xiong Qizhi, a volunteer at the town’s rehabilitation center, the reason why Yu Yifu became a special case of longevity is related to the patient care of his lover for more than a decade.
Next to the inseparable, encounter sudden onset of pneumothorax, if not in time to call the ambulance, on the spot a life. Usually, even when picking up farm work in front of the house, he had to go into the house every few minutes to take care of him, carefully waiting for him to turn down his shoulders, and if he didn’t breathe well and no one happened to be around to pat his back, he would breathe in just a few minutes.
When Yang Mao was 20 years old, he went with the flow to a gold mine in Weinan Tongguan County to “hold the drill”, a disease he had not heard of at the time. The dust raised during work was sucked into the throat and blocked the airways in the lungs.
In the autumn and winter of 2020, the valve could not keep up, and he used his last strength to breathe, and his alveoli burst instantly. Fortunately, there were people present, 120 arrived in time to punch a hole in the chest, picking up a life, “many people die of pneumothorax, just for a moment, the gas can not be released and died “.
The poor thing is that it is impossible to have someone around all the time.
Just diagnosed that moment, Yang Mao also went back to the mine to continue to do forklift for most of the year, can earn a little bit to count. Later, really can not do, the wife soon for divorce. Brother in the old home base, to Yang Mao built two rooms, the inside can only put a bed, a charcoal burning stove.
Everywhere he went, pneumoconiosis patients were trapped in dark bedding, surrounded by a charcoal stove that was not hot enough, a creaking oxygen machine, and slatted noodles, scattered and messy capsules, and boxes of cheap nutrition products.
The cruel thing is that once such a chain of iron shackles is put on, the whole family falls irrevocably into the bottomless abyss like a lead ball tied around the neck, losing dignity step by step in the endless embarrassment, helplessness and numbness. In the study “Survey Report on Migrant Workers with Pneumoconiosis in China 2020”, more than three-quarters of the respondents with pneumoconiosis believe that the biggest contradiction in life is that it costs a lot of money to see a doctor and they cannot go out to work.
Wang Fei, 45, was officially diagnosed with pneumoconiosis before he became incapacitated, with two students waiting to be fed and a wife working in a Xi’an restaurant. “It can’t be helped, I can’t do any more work. “
Due to the year-round income is not enough to make ends meet, Wang Fei simply do not have the spare capacity to buy slightly more expensive drugs, his wife is not able to accompany around a care, only to rely on the elderly mother, to solve the most basic food and living.
Wang Fei’s neighbor, Ni De’an, went down to the mine to drill after graduating from high school and was still in stage 2 when he was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis, but the financial burden was so heavy that he went out to do odd jobs elsewhere until 2020. If he had come back earlier and bought some medicine to eat, he might not have developed so fast. “Ni De’an’s wife Zhang Yiqin sighed without shame. Because she had to pay for her children’s education, she had to go out to work to earn money and had no time to take care of her husband’s health. My father-in-law is disabled and has only one full hand. My mother-in-law raises pigs and chickens in front of the house and grows vegetables to subsidize the family.
After years and years of hard work, Yu Yifu old companion has long been through the vicissitudes of life, who does not know how long it will take to take care of her husband. Yu Yifu can not rest assured that the two sons, there is really no way to work in the mountains, or have to rely on digging mines to shave food, especially the youngest son, not yet married and have children.
He often blames himself for not fulfilling his father’s duties, because his body does not compete to drag everyone down, delaying the two sons to study, so early drop out of school without a diploma, and had to take life for money.
3、Live
There is no shortage of stories about the ill-fated experiences of pneumoconiosis patients who try to ask for a little more breathing time from life in the midst of their illness.
Xue Dingyou and Xue Dinbing are a pair of difficult siblings. They are eight sisters, three years apart, the two brothers did not finish elementary school, more than ten years old ran to Shanxi coal mine digging. Ten years ago, both parents died together, coughing and fever gasping for air, began to haunt the two youngest sons, until they could not do heavy work returned home, but the old dilapidated house has been unable to shelter.
The villagers took pity on the brothers and put the brother Xue Tianyou in the nearly abandoned Dragon King Temple in front of the village, a narrow piece of small curtains leaking rain on all sides, Xue Tianyou spent dozens of dollars to buy a tarp to plug the holes, and survived the past nine years.
On the night of New Year’s Eve in 2021, Xue Tianyou passed away. Before he died, he dreamed of getting a wife, but who would marry a “consumption ghost” who lived in the temple? Xue Dianbing was married and had a family, and had a daughter, before going to Guizhou to dig coal, met a local woman successfully married. The other party is also a bitter person, five years old when his mother was injured in an accident, no money for treatment, blind in one eye, twelve years old when his father died in a gas explosion.
Not long after she married, Xue Dianbing’s health was getting worse every day, and after a checkup, it was true that she had the same pneumoconiosis as her brother. The daughter-in-law took care of the sickly man, but also cultivated the family’s two acres of farmland, raising two pigs and a few chickens, thinking of making some meat for the two brothers to eat. Raised, fed so much feed boar suddenly got sick and died.
Xue Dianbing came up with the idea of “recruiting a husband to raise a husband”. He has a native cousin, the father died early, the mother is a mute, the family is too poor to marry a daughter-in-law, after three negotiations, in 2018 and Xue Dianbing daughter-in-law combined together. No wedding, no registration, living together in front and behind the house, counted as maintaining the family.
There is really no rice to cook, cousin ran to Shanxi’s coal mine to play drilling to solve the urgent needs. After a period of time, the body appeared with Xue Dianyou, Xue Dianbing exactly the same symptoms. When he took a film, he found out that he had pneumoconiosis.
Wang Keqin, founder of the public interest organization Big Love Clean Dust, said that so many of the pneumoconiosis farmers we can see “are actually part of what remains to this day. “
A few years ago, Xiong Qizhi followed a “teacher” from Beijing to visit the famous local This pocket-sized natural village is hidden in the nooks and crannies of a mountain fold deep in the Qinling Mountains, with only a sheep’s intestine path through the bushes, stepping on gravel and walking alone along the cliff edge. It took two hours on foot to see the smoke of the cooking.
At that time, only 12 farming families remained in Hegou, and 6 people had already died of this disease, leaving every family poor, sick and devastated. Later, a journalist asked Xiong Qizhi to act as a guide and lead the group to explore the area, but he politely refused. He could no longer climb the mountain path, and he himself was a stage III pneumoconiosis patient, and he had registered hundreds of pneumoconiosis families up and down the town, one by one.
I heard that now only one adobe thatched house is left standing alone in the village, and all other living relics are razed to the ground as if they never existed.
4、90s
To this day, there are still new cases of pneumoconiosis in Chaiping Town.
The occupation of the post-90s patients who contracted the disease is no longer mainly in mines, but concentrated in stone processing and furniture manufacturing. In fact, the latter is easier to do preventive measures than traditional mines, and if dust control norms are implemented carefully and responsibly, the incidence can actually be greatly reduced. Moreover, compared to the older generation of migrant workers, the post-90s are more open-minded and have a stronger desire to save themselves, if society increases its efforts to rescue, more young people can extend their lives or even survive.
Born in 1992, Hou Yuanqing played a small life, father weak, mother suffering from mental illness, just as soon as adults, left the Sichuan hometown to work far away, “the family is too poor, are relying on me to work “. At first looking for work in Yunnan sand and gravel factory, and later followed an acquaintance to do artificial quartz stone. This material spills dust particles into the air ducts and fibers more rapidly.
Later he went to a prefecture-level city to seek medical advice, and because of some elevation gain, just after getting off the bus people couldn’t carry it and were sent directly to the hospital by 120, but the doctor flatly concluded that what he had was not pneumoconiosis, but tuberculosis. Later, when he went to a large hospital in Kunming with the film, the doctor consulted a number of occupations and told Hou Yuanqing clearly that his disease was pneumoconiosis, but that he could only medically determine pneumoconiosis, not formally diagnose it. Because the workshop where he worked was a private enterprise, he could not get the “working environment certificate”, so the hospital could not confirm the diagnosis. Therefore, I could not be given pneumoconiosis medicine.
If it wasn’t for the pneumoconiosis, Wang Shifen would have missed his years working in Guangdong, where he got his first cup of milk tea in 2012 with his own salary. In the marble factory as an apprentice, a month can open two to three thousand, while in Jiangxi Ganzhou down the county as a waiter, full of only a few hundred. He remitted the saved wages back to the family’s old house installed and repaired.
That year, he just turned 20 years old. “(Quartz factory) is the kind of basement, about 400 square meters, there is ash everywhere, go in a few minutes, the whole person is white. “Wang Shiwen is the only son in the family, before entering the factory, he actually wanted to be a truck driver, but did not have the opportunity to get a driver’s license, had to give up. Nowadays, the memories of youth are being covered frame by frame by the sting of the disease.
(Fang Yong, Wang Qianrong and Wang Shiwen are pseudonyms in the article)
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