MINING IN CHINA: A 3000-Year Tradition

The mining of metals and coal in China goes back at least 3,000 years, but Chinese mining technology has remained primitive by western standards for almost all of that time. Today, rapid industrialization, a rapid growth in geological and mineralogical knowledge, and a growing awareness of the mineral specimen market, all promise to keep increasing the supply of fine collector mineral specimens from China.

HISTORY

"People naturally don't like the dark. Who would want to be a miner digging galleries in the vicinity of the yellow springs?"

Want Chung Lun Hong, A.D. 82

Mining is known to have taken place within the boundaries of modern China more than 3,000 years ago (Zhu Xun, 2002). Archeological excavations in the mining center of Tonglushan, near the city of Daye in Hubei Province, have revealed important historical information concerning mines that were active during the time of the Chinese bronze culture, whose original settlements go back to the beginning of the Shang Dynasty, firmly dated at 1766-1121 B.C. There in 1973 a 3,000-year-old copper mine with smelting facilities was discovered on Mt. Verdigris. At this site, near the Yangtze River about 20 km southwest of Huangshi, more than 400,000 tonnes of ancient slag were found, covering a surface area of 20,000 square meters.

The ancient Tonglushan mines worked the oxidized zone of a high-grade copper deposit, probably discovered because of malachite showings on the surface. Archaeological excavations unearthed tools made of bronze, iron, bamboo, wood and stone, as well as uncovering more than 100 separate diggings and dozens of smelting furnaces; the total length of the trenches and shafts has been estimated at 8,000 meters. These workings can be dated as having existed between the 11th century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D., during which time a total quantity of copper between 80,000 and 120,000 tonnes was extracted. It is interesting to note that one of the early excavations revealed a 60-meter-deep shaft extending 23 meters below the water table as it was then. In Tonglushan today, near the ancient mine workings, there is a large open-pit copper mine which provides small calcite crystals and low-quality azurite rosettes to modern collectors.

To be sure, the Chinese culture was not the first to use metals, but in the first and second millennia before Christ, China held a high place in the ancient world for metal mining and metalworking. Regrettably, there are no early descriptions of mining and minerals in China except as connected with traditional writings on the themes of pharmacy and medicine. In one of the first important Chinese works on geography, Shan-Hai Ching's The Classic of the Mountains and Seas (3rd to 1st century B.C.), 89 metallic and non-metallic materials are described, but there are only a few interesting remarks concerning mines. The work is a geographical gazetteer of ancient China and a catalogue of natural and supernatural flora and fauna; it is also a repository of folkways, medical superstitions, and oral and written traditions from earlier times.

During the Tang and Song Dynasties (7th through 13th centuries A.D.), mining in China evolved into the country's second most important economic activity (after agriculture), as measured by the value of its products. As measured by numbers of people involved, mining held third place, behind agriculture and the making of clothing. However, the Chinese mining industry at no time achieved the social importance that it had in Europe, and it did not stimulate any general technological development. Historical research, as well as archaeological finds of tools in ancient workings, show clearly that from the time of the first intensive metal mining, about 1000 B.C., to the Middle Ages, no significant developments in the field took place.

To understand Chinese mining and its development, it is necessary to be aware of the special conditions in that huge empire. China has always had at its disposal an enormous number of deposits of many different raw materials, scattered widely over the country. Most of these deposits are very small and irregularly configured, and consequently it is often not economical to institute more modern technology that would require heavy capital investment. Furthermore, since earliest times there has been an oversupply of very cheap labor, but very little ready capital to invest in mining. Climatic factors also play a significant role: mine work is necessarily seasonal. And the limited availability of water in the relatively dry northern plains has historically been a further hindrance to technological development.

The earliest thorough written description of ore-processing methods in China is an encyclopedia of natural science and technology, Tiangong Kaiwu, composed in 1637 by the scholar Song Yingxing. This work is a remarkable documentation of Chinese technology during the latter Ming Dynasty. It describes production, preparation and treatment methods for a variety of mineral materials and manufactured goods, with interesting graphic illustrations. However, no comprehensive treatment of mining itself is included.