#Presence·Non-fiction writing scholarship: "Children digging for gold, unstable, dying in Africa": the undercurrent of transnational gold diggers in China and Africa (1)

Author: Tan Wei

Central Africa, Yanokai: Ahui

5°18'52.3"N 17°05'51.1"E

1

"I have white hair and black heads. It's so sad. My son dug for gold, was unstable, and died in Africa. I'm scared, how can I survive this life" - the movie "Summer Solstice"

At 12:30 local time in the Central African Republic on December 1, 2020, A Hui, a gold miner from Shanglin, Guangxi, suffered a sudden stomach bleeding in the mining area in Yaloke Town. He was sent to the hospital where rescue efforts failed, and he unfortunately passed away. Only 44 years old. Ah Hui's short life was condensed into a simple death certificate issued by St. Blandin's Hospital in Bangui, the capital of Central Africa. The death certificate contains his name, date of birth, time of death (20:05 on December 1, 2020), occupation (mining manager) and cause of death (stomach bleeding and cardiopulmonary shock). The certificate is printed in the center. Seal of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Abroad of the Republic and signature of the physician of the local hospital.

Ah Hui's body was placed in the morgue of the local hospital. His death required various certificates: medical identification from the local hospital, death certificate from the local police station, death certification from the embassy in Central Africa, The death notice from the Republic Mining Association... The language of these death notices and confirmations is cold and precise, like an official epitaph written for this unknown miner from southern China. On December 4, Ah Hui’s boss Lao Qin finally obtained the official death certificate and applied for a permit for the cremation of the remains. The license reads: Hui, born in 1975, Guangxi, male, died after shock at St. Blandin's Hospital in Bangui on December 1, 2020. The body will be sent for cremation at 8:30 on December 5. .

Ah Hui's body lay quietly on a thick pile of wood. The local corpse transporter poured gasoline on it and lit a fire. It took six or seven hours to complete the cremation. Ah Hui's wife and children cannot accompany him on this last journey of his life due to the long journey and the outbreak of the epidemic. The fire was raging and making a sizzling sound. Accompanying him were several workers from his mining area and his boss Lao Qin. The long cremation prolonged the ordeal. Lao Qin squatted aside in silence, smoking one depressed cigarette after another. Over the years of gold mining in Africa, he has seen and witnessed the death of too many workers: a boy from the same village who died of Malaria, his cousin who was shot to death by local robbers on the construction site, and a man who went to explore the mining area. The worker who died in a car accident on the road, the partner who was robbed and killed when he went to the market town to sell gold... It was Lao Qin who took care of their posthumous affairs.

Lao Qin said that the money earned from gold mining is earned by risking one's life, and gold contains human blood. He clearly remembers that the first time he was handling the funeral arrangements for a miner from the same village who was infected with malaria and died. He was only 36 years old and died in a foreign country at a young age. Lao Qin was responsible for sending his ashes back to China. That day, due to heavy fog, flights at Accra’s Kotoka International Airport were largely delayed. At night, he and the urn were in the same room, huddled in a small room in a hotel next to the airport. That night he kept his eyes open and the light on, staying up all night. He said it was not because of fear, but because he felt like he was surviving a disaster. He couldn't imagine how his elderly parents, wife and children in the countryside would spend the rest of their lives if the urn contained his own remains.

Lao Qin bought a separate ticket for the deceased miner. His urn was wrapped in a schoolbag and he sat next to Lao Qin, near the window. This was the last part of his life. Lao Qin said he did not want to feel wronged. He squeezed into the trunk. After a nineteen-hour long flight, the plane finally landed, but was stopped by customs officers upon entry, suspecting that the urn contained illegal items. Lao Qin took out stacks of death certificates, medical records and embassy certificates and explained them repeatedly before letting him go. He flew back to Nanning from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport overnight with the urn in his arms, and drove for more than three hours before finally arriving at the deceased's hometown. It was already dawn. When approaching the entrance of the village, Lao Tan touched the urn and said silently in his heart: "Old cousin, go home!".

This time, due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic and China's strict entry quarantine and circuit breaker policies, flights back to China from Africa are very few and extremely expensive. It has become very difficult for Shanglin miners in Africa to return home. Ah Hui's lover could not find a fellow villager who would take Ah Hui's ashes back to China, so he had to ask Lao Qin to bury him in a foreign country. There is a palm tree beside a dirt road leading to the mining area of ​​Yanokai Town. Ah Hui was buried in a small mound without a tombstone or name.

Among the belongings sent home were Ah Fai's two passports. The ID photo in the first passport was taken by Ah Hui at the county entry-exit hall in March 2011. The 35-year-old man was wearing a black POLO shirt and had a determined look in his eyes. This is his first time to apply for a passport, and his first time to go abroad. He will go to a West African country that he has never heard of, but is also called the "Gold Coast" - Ghana. The price of international gold has soared since 2008. In March 2011, when Ah Hui applied for his passport, the gold trading price in the London bullion market had soared from US$855/ounce in January 2008 to US$1,426/ounce. The gold craze in the big world has begun to sweep across Shanglin, a poor place on the border of South China, tugging at the heartstrings of people in this place with a profound tradition of gold mining.

More than two months after Ah Hui applied for his passport, local banks and credit unions suddenly poured in more than 1.2 billion remittances in one month. Such abnormal capital flows in this nationally impoverished county even alarmed relevant authorities in Beijing, and officials suspected The money may be "black money" and is feared to be related to overseas money laundering, gambling and telecommunications fraud. The China Securities Regulatory Commission, the Banking Regulatory Commission, the Ministry of Public Security and other departments sent a joint working group to Shanglin County to investigate the matter. Local grassroots cadres took them to see the sand pump manufacturing factory in full swing in the market town, visited the families of African gold diggers, and pointed to the village He told these Beijing officials, "These are all built with 'African money'. They are all the hard-earned money that our gold farmers earned from digging for gold in Africa." At the end of that year, the county credit cooperative hung a huge red banner that read, "Warmly celebrate the savings deposits of our residents reaching 3 billion yuan." The town government hung a red slogan that read, "One person goes abroad to work, and the whole family gets rid of poverty and becomes rich."

2

"(Indonesia's Bre-X gold mine) is a show, a drama, a magic trick and a collective illusion... Profits must be imagined first and then extracted. The more spectacular the magic, the greater the potential for investment frenzy. Bigger" - Anna Tsing, 2001

At that time, in the village where Ah Hui lived, gold, Ghana and investing in Africa became the most important topics after fights and dinners. The villagers chatted under the old locust tree about the legendary figures in the gold rush: the lucky man who dug up "nugget gold" on a construction site in Ghana, the debt-ridden gambler who made a comeback by digging for gold in Africa, The "San Mao" who once lived in the world bought a mansion and a luxury car in the county after the gold rush broke out in Africa. A boss with a lot of money made hundreds of thousands in one night from a Ghanaian power plant... These legends are both real and illusory, like colorful hopes. The bubble machine constantly creates dreams for local people and captures their hearts. The family dinner after ancestor worship during the Qingming Festival turned into an investment shareholder meeting. Relatives enthusiastically shared the secrets of investing in Ghana and Africa, and discussed how to raise funds to invest in shares and seize this rare opportunity to get rich. At the wine table, the young men in the village held low-pixel mobile phones and passed each other photos sent back from Ghana: gold prospectors holding gold bars and gold bricks in the mining areas of Ghana. , when selling gold with an Indian boss, bundles of Cedis (Ghana’s official currency) and stacks of hundred-dollar cash, Shanglin people were in the Kumasi mines with roaring Carter brand excavators and Sand pumps made in Shanglin... These photos, these fragments of appearance, are like the puzzle pieces of a treasure map of wealth, like a magic money-attracting stone, inspiring people in this impoverished place where the per capita annual income is less than 3,000 yuan. A strong desire to be rich and suddenly rich. Ghana, a remote country in West Africa known as the "Gold Coast", has become a new "city of gold", a new land of hope and fertile land for wealth in the eyes of this group of energetic grassroots gold diggers.

In the market town where Ah Fai lives, things related to Africa emerge like wild mushrooms after the rain.

On the roof of a five-story building next to the road in the market town stands a huge billboard for "Invest in Africa." This is an import and export trading company. The store sign reads "Shanglin-Senegal-Mali" and is hung on the left and right sides of the store. There are statues of Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping with gold rims, and large slogans reading "Carry the revolution to the end" hang on the walls. Outside the shed of the sand pump manufacturing factory opposite the foreign trade company, there are densely packed sand pumps and diesel engines. In the eyes of gold diggers, they are like fat money printing machines.

There are long container trucks parked on the side of the narrow village road. This box full of supplies will be transported to Yantian Port in Shenzhen, from where it will be transported across the ocean to Shanglin people’s mining lands in West Africa. Companies selling excavators, diesel engines and spare parts have been established one after another. Their bosses are watching the international gold price on their desks, with large maps of Africa taped to the wall. There is a visa agency advertisement posted on the telephone pole: "Professional Visa: Professional visa processing for Ghana, Gabon, Zimbabwe and other countries and all over the world, ensuring that you reach your destination quickly, smoothly and safely."

In front of the small shop, a signboard reads "Ghana Visa, official certificate issuance in Beijing, one-stop service in Shanglin". In front of the private pharmacy is a poster saying "Our store has long-term supply of African medicines, artesunate tablets". On the white wall of the school next to the road in the market town, there is a slogan "Those who have returned from Africa, go to the county CDC to check whether they have malaria." Boss Jin, who made his fortune in Africa, opened a local "Gold Rush Paradise" farmhouse. In the center of the park, there is a set of scrapped African gold mining equipment, and next to it are a group of statues of black women from West African tribes. In the park, there are boxes in the style of thatched houses in the West African countryside with the words "Ghana Box", "Cameroon Box", "Nigeria Box", "Congolese Box" and "Mali Box"... They are placed in front of the lobby of a store selling gold mining equipment and accessories. Below the statues of Guan Yu, the God of Wealth and Guanyin, and Chairman Mao hanging on the wall of the boss's office, a golden lucky cat with the words "Ten Thousand Liangs of Gold" written on it kept waving.

The boss's account book records various machine parts to be sent to Ghana. The golden cover of the account book looks like it is paved with placer gold. The title page reads "Today you do things people will not do, tomorrow you will do things people cannot do”. The proprietress of a sand pump factory wore reading glasses and typed the international logistics delivery list letter by letter in an Excel spreadsheet.

Workers at the sand pump factory are busy working day and night, and the factory is filled with the harsh roar of machines. Workers driving forklifts "feed" gold mining equipment and machine parts into the containers one after another: sand pumps, superchargers, turntables, DC welders, chain plates, bucket teeth, bucket shafts, grease guns, chains, gold collection bag and oil. The female workers are packing daily necessities used by the mine workers, such as Jai Alai brand men's mining rain boots, Snow Beer, Zhenlong cigarettes, honeysuckle tea, Red Bull drinks, eight-treasure porridge, sun umbrellas, rolling papers, noodles and flour, etc.

Large trucks carrying containers lined up in a long queue on the narrow streets. The drivers honked their horns impatiently and the newly repaired concrete road was filled with potholes. Each container will be transported to the International Container Terminal in Yantian, Shenzhen, and after a fifty-six-day sea voyage, it will arrive at the Tema Port in Ghana. After customs clearance, these equipment and materials will be transported to the banks of the Tano River and the Offin River, where there are rich placer gold. Gold prospectors from Shanglin are working along these two rivers from the north to New placer gold mining areas are constantly opening up to the south, and the traveling gold mining footprints are all over Kumasi, Obuasi, Dunkwa, Samreboi, Assanklangwa ( Asankragua) and many other gold mining towns in Ghana.

The strong pulse of the international gold market has deeply affected the livelihood and desire for wealth of people in this southern border area. A tropical storm of "Invest in Ghana!" has begun to blow in this small place. Meat vendors, clothing store owners, and canteen owners were no longer willing to engage in small-profit businesses. They all used their savings accumulated over the years to take a share in the Shanglin people's Ghana gold mining unit. Some farmers sold their cattle, sheep and crops to scrape together money for travel to Africa to pan for gold. Private lenders carry briefcases and run to the villages, lending money to those who are eager to board the "Invest in Africa" ​​wealth express. Factory bosses, grassroots civil servants, and directors of credit unions were also jealous of those who had a "golden life" and suddenly got rich. They mustered up the courage to "go to sea" and join this gold rush. The greetings among friends changed from "Have you eaten?" to "Have you invested in Africa?"

In this small place, going gold mining on the "Gold Coast" has become synonymous with wealth and hope, like a hot and charming tropical "wind" blowing from the African continent.

3

The small entry-exit hall in the county seat was crowded with people coming to apply for passports, and the long queue stretched far and wide to the street. In 2006, the number of people applying for passports in this remote county was only 378, but by 2010 and 2011, the total number of people applying for passports in the county soared to 5,229. Many people have obtained their first passports and are about to leave the country for the first time, heading to the unknown "Gold Coast" of Ghana to search for alluring grains of gold.

Ah Hui is one of this group of people going abroad. As the international gold price in 2012 hit its highest record since 1970, soaring to US$1,920.8 per ounce at its peak, waves of gold rush waves continued to sweep through the borderland of South China. This year, the number of people applying for passports to go abroad in the county soared to 6,941, setting a record high. The county's immigration brigade had to open a "green channel" to cope with the flood of people going abroad.

Ah Hui scraped together 20,000 yuan from relatives and friends, and found an agency in "Beijing" to handle Ghana's visa and purchase air tickets. It didn't take long for the visa to be processed smoothly. The Ghanaian visa officer drew a black circle on the maximum time limit for entry and residence "30 days." Like many fellow countrymen, Ah Hui obtained a 30-day temporary stay tourist visa. The round-trip air ticket required for visa application was also transformed into a one-way air ticket the moment he boarded the plane through the operation of the "Beijing" agent. On this unknown journey to go abroad for gold mining, many Shanglin people set the return date as the day when their investment will be repaid, debts will be paid off, and they will make a fortune, and that day may be very short, or it may be very long. This is Ah Fai's first time in his life to fly on a plane, his first time abroad, and his first time to the distant African continent. His impression of Africa is only the wild and hot deserts, violent lions and wet tropics in the "Animal World" rainforest.

Ah Hui's trip to Africa this time was just like the first time Ah Hui and his third uncle went on a long journey fifteen years ago. They took the green train for seven days and seven nights from Nanning in southern China to Heilongjiang in the far north to visit the "golden world". Gold mining in the Daxinganling Mountains is known as the “edge”. Amid the gold rush of "thousands of gold farmers rushing to Guandong", Ah Hui resigned from the electronics factory in Shenzhen and left the assembly line where he had worked for three years. In the narrow passage of the train, everyone was carrying heavy snakeskin bags, and the train was as crowded as Spring Festival travel. The toilets and aisles on the train were crowded with people from Shanglin who went to Heilongjiang to prospect for gold. Some were curled up and crowded on the luggage rack of the carriage. Some were sleepy and lay down in the small space under the seats to squint and take a nap. He dozed off crookedly at the door of the toilet. In a report in Guangxi's "South China Morning Post" that year, "Gold farmers from Guangxi make their way to Guandong," this massive gold rush was described:

"From 1994 to 1996, more than 30,000 gold prospectors in Shanglin County went north to Heilongjiang every year with more than 10 million yuan in capital. Such a large-scale flow of migrant workers and capital was unprecedented in Shanglin County and also in Guangxi. It is rare... In a living and working environment with harsh natural conditions, this "expeditionary army" of farmers who migrated thousands of miles driven by a strong desire to make a fortune will stage scenes of touching tragedies and comedies."

Recalling the hardships he and Ah Hui endured while "traveling to Guandong", Ah Hui's third uncle still vividly remembers: "The green train stopped and went. We went from Litang Railway Station to Beijing Station, then transferred to Harbin Station, and then We took the shuttle bus to the county seat and went to the long-distance bus station to move the consigned equipment. The mining area is in the deep mountains and old forests. We had to carry sand pumps, diesel engines, shovels, scrapers, water guns and hammers up the mountain ourselves. Six strong men carried seven or eight hundred A pound of sand pump, and four men carried a diesel engine of more than 600 pounds, step by step from the foot of the mountain to the mountain. The mountain road had 18 bends and was so bumpy that it caused blood blisters on our feet, which we needed to pierce with a needle to continue. Let’s go. Every time the man carrying the machine climbed a section of the mountain road, he gasped for air. The heavy machine bent his waist and rubbed the skin off his shoulders. Finally we arrived at the destination. As soon as we settled down, we started to build a work shed and cut down some trees for wood. The piles were then surrounded with colorful strips and coarse cloth, and everyone ate, drank, had sex, and slept there. In April, the ground in the north had not completely thawed. Three or four people rushed into the ground with high-pressure water guns, and their whole bodies were soaked by the ice water. The biting cold My rheumatism was the root of my rheumatism at that time. A group of people explored the "Golden Road" along the river ditch. After demarcating the mining site, they began to set up sand pumps, build wooden chutes, move diesel engines, and then dig soil, Drilling wells, pumping sand, clearing water, and finally using gold buckets to wash out placer gold. Snakes, hedgehogs, and mice slipped into the wooden bed in the work shed from time to time, and we killed the game as a tooth sacrifice. It took us twenty or thirty days to go down the mountain. , usually three meals a day are potatoes, cabbage and soybeans. Eat it in the morning, eat it at noon, fry it and eat it in the evening. There are very few female workers in the mines, but they do no less work than male workers, and they have to do it for a large group of people. Make a big meal, wash dishes, do laundry, buy groceries, keep accounts... At night, a group of people sleep in the Datong shop, and a curtain is drawn between the couple and us, and we can hear what they whisper."

In those years, Ah Hui was like a wild goose that traveled north and returned south. After worshiping his ancestors during the Qingming Festival, he took the green leather train north to Heilongjiang and came back around July 14th, the Ghost Festival. His gold mining footprints are all over the Greater Khingan Mountains, Heihe, Nenjiang and Huma. Once when he was transferring home from Beijing Railway Station, he went to Tiananmen Square and Chairman Mao Memorial Hall to see Chairman Mao. He hid a wad of wrinkled and worn money in the small pocket sewn at the side of his briefs.

At this point, Ah Hui's third uncle suddenly said: "I have a good thing, take a look." He dug out a package from the wooden box in the utility room, which was wrapped in yellowed and old letter paper. Ah Hui's third uncle carefully opened it. The black soil was mixed with tiny golden particles. He said to me: "This is the placer gold I found in Heilongjiang. Ah Hui and I scraped it out with a moon scraper in the mine." , Ladle out the gold bucket and dig it out bit by bit." Sixteen years later, Ah Hui, the tireless goose, will embark on another journey to pan for gold. This time, he will go to Ghana, a West African country known as the "Gold Coast", to search for gold in the distant African continent. Such tiny, shiny yellow placer gold.

4

In June 2011, at the entrance of the Nanning Wuxu Airport terminal, Ah Hui and Ah Ying, who was holding their infant child, asked passers-by to take an out-of-focus group photo of them. No one thought that this photo would It became the last photo of the couple. Ah Hui departed from Guangzhou Baiyun Airport, transferred in Addis Ababa, and took an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing aircraft. After a long flight of 19 hours and 10 minutes, he finally landed at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana. On that flight, there were many fellow Ahui people who spoke strong words. They all embraced the dream of gold mining and rushed to Ghana, a mysterious country known as the "Gold Coast".

Ah Fai's first passport, with its corners cut off, was as old as the wrinkles and skin of an old man, and it was covered with visa stamps from various countries in West Africa. From 2011 to 2020, he traveled to mining areas in Ghana, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Central Africa. He and his co-workers went to the tropical rain forests and streams to explore for gold mines, and met with the local Nana (the local chief, who not only holds the ownership of many rural lands, but also is the political and religious authority of the local society) and villagers. Negotiate mining land, drive with the boss to sell gold to Indian bosses at the border and market towns, and ask the bosses in Fujian and Zhejiang to remit workers' wages back to the country through underground banks. They also went to the local market to buy vegetables, bags of water, and Chinese goods made in China. When the "Dabutee" (a time for local believers to worship and pray, and production is prohibited) was closed, they would go to the local "Shanglin Street" to eat a bowl of home-style noodles, and go to the casino run by a Fujian man. Play a slot machine, and then go to KTV to sing and flirt with the girl from Ningde. From 2017 to 2018 alone, Ah Hui entered and exited the Cameroon border 34 times, like a wild fish swimming freely in the waters of West Africa.

In 2020, Ah Hui changed to a second new passport at the Chinese Embassy in Central Africa in Bangui, which will not expire until 2030. Ah Hui was very happy at the time, because in Shanglin County, where passports are strictly controlled and the passports of many overseas gold diggers have been blocked, a passport that can travel abroad normally for a long time is simply more precious than gold. The appearance of Ah Fai in the second passport ID photo is completely different from the one in the first passport. Years of hard work in tropical mines, working hours that were reversed day and night, and suffering from diarrhea, gout and stomach problems made the 44-year-old Ah Fai look old. In the ID photo, his skin is tanned by the harsh tropical sun, his eyes are sunken and dull, his once thick hair has become sparse, and the wrinkles on his forehead are appearing or disappearing.

Now, a corner of this new passport that once made Ah Hui happy has been cut off, like a ruthless death sentence, officially announcing the end of this grassroots life that once flowed freely in the wild and golden world, leaving behind his 43-year-old wife. Aying and her two young children spent the rest of their lives in difficulty.

On the day Ah Hui's lover A Ying and her child went to the insurance company to handle the claim settlement, she signed her name on the insurance claim agreement with a trembling voice. The two children lowered their heads and scrolled through their mobile phones, seeming to be escaping the cruelty of reality in the shell of the screen world. Their father is so far away and strange to them. It is the repeated and simple greetings from the other end of the overseas phone call, "Listen to mom" and "Do you have any money?"; it is the remote video with weak signal and intermittent The vague image on the phone is a strange middle-aged man who only comes back every two years... They haven't called "Dad" for a long time. But now, this distant, long-absent father has died in a foreign country, leaving forever and never coming back.

The insurance officer asked the three of them to take a photo with their father's insurance claim form as proof of claim. His wife said it was like the last "family photo" of their family, a yin and a yang. Although there is a death compensation of 600,000 yuan, his wife said that this is money in exchange for life, and he should save it bit by bit like squeezing toothpaste. Now she has to go out and work several odd jobs every day. She has to bear all her children's tuition fees, living expenses at home, and the unpaid debts that Ah Hui invested in gold mining in Africa a few years ago. When leaving the insurance company, Ah Hui's wife carefully held his two passports as if she were holding his lover's ashes. There were two lines of silent tears in the corners of her eyes.

Viewed from a distance, Ah Hui's home is inconspicuous among a bunch of new houses in the village. A rusty green crane hangs from the roof of the uncapped building. The second floor is still a rough red brick building with sharp corners exposed from the steel frame. On both sides of the red rusty door are yellowed Spring Festival couplets that read, "Enter a rich family with abundant wealth, and seek wealth when you go out to get it." On the wall on the left side of the main room, there is a cross-stitch saying, "Everything is prosperous when home is harmonious" and two children. of awards. When he arrived at A Hui's home, his lover A Ying had just returned from working in the orange orchard in the next village. A Ying pointed at the house with her calloused fingers and said: "This family is built little by little. The houses are built layer by layer. Some use "Heilongjiang money", and some use "Heilongjiang money"." "African money". Every stone brick, every door and window, and every inch of space in the house has the shadow of A Hui wandering outside. When Ah Hui came back during the Qingming Festival the year before last, he told Ah Ying that he would work at the Central African Mine for another two years and then he would renovate the second floor that had not been started yet. But Ah Hui and Ah Ying did not wait for that day. A Ying lowered her head, tears dripping down on her dusty pleated jeans, leaving streaks of tears. The remaining candles in front of the ancestors' memorial tablets in front of the hall were burning, giving off a faint yellow light.

5

Aying took off her sun hat and sleeves. Her hair was soaked with sweat, and her cheeks and neck were red from the harsh sun. She hit her sore waist hard. During the busy harvest season, she worked in an orchard near the village, earning 100 yuan a day and providing lunch. Fertilizing, pruning, grafting and applying pesticides in citrus orchards. The citrus orchard where she works was contracted by a boss named Jin from the next village who was panning for gold in Cameroon. Boss Jin’s wife is responsible for managing it at home. The golden bosses who had made a fortune in Africa a few years ago heard that growing citrus fruits at home had a future, so they followed suit and planted hundreds of acres of citrus fruits. The land in their hometowns and the citrus fruits in the wind became new "Gold Mine". In the past few years, while Ah Hui was working at Boss Shanglin's mine in Central Africa, Aying was pruning, fertilizing and harvesting fruits in Boss Jin's orchard in her hometown. Aying said: "Orange fruits are not like gold. Gold maintains its value and the price of citrus fruits changes every year. In the past two years, the price of citrus fruits dropped to the point where hiring people to pick and select the fruits could not make back the money. Many bosses just let the fruits rot in the orchards. Inside, everything falling on the ground is ripe and rotten fruit.”

If we turn back time to 1986, thirty-six years ago, the more than 100 acres of citrus orchard and surrounding farmland where Aying worked so hard was once regarded as a land rich in gold resources by the state-owned "Shanglin Gold Mine" company. fertile ground for wealth. The Guangxi Geological Exploration Team and the state-owned Southeast Gold Mining Company are full of confidence in the mining prospects of this deposit. The total infrastructure investment budget for the entire Shanglin Gold Mine is as high as 12.12 million yuan, and the mining life cycle is expected to be as long as 14 years. The total predicted reserves of placer gold are as high as 2233.9 kilograms. After complex calculations, this will be a large-scale high-quality gold mine project with an annual output value of up to 4.8553 million yuan, an investment profit rate of 16.5%, and a total profit after return of capital of up to 13.55982 million yuan. In the grand blueprint of the "Shanglin Gold Mine", Shanglin, a poor frontier land in the south, will be transformed into a prosperous and prosperous "gold city", and the gold mining industry will be like a powerful "development machine" , leading the people in this impoverished county to get rid of poverty and become prosperous.

In 1990, under the rolling Daming Mountains, stood a giant gold dredger weighing 1,164.4 tons and costing 4.98 million yuan to build. This 200-liter pile-type continuous chain bucket gold dredger was developed by the Heihe Mining Company of the Ministry of Metallurgy. The Gold Ship Design Institute designed one of the largest gold mining ships in China at that time.

Outside the walls of the mining area, there are crowds of onlookers every day. Everyone stares at this behemoth, expecting it to dig out endless gold treasures from the ground. There are also long lines of students wearing red scarves to visit this Transformers-like gold dredging ship and then go back to write the essay about the "gold dredging ship" assigned by the teacher. In the eyes of these children, this gold mining ship is like an extraterrestrial object from an alien planet, like a dream ship that is both real and illusory, and like a giant steel beast. No one would have thought that many of these children would be driving excavators more than twenty years later, excavating the remains buried in the earth in the flattened tropical rainforests and cocoa forests in West Africa. Gold treasure underground.

But no one expected that just three years later, this ambitious large-scale gold mining project would suddenly cease production and disband. The "cause of death" is still unknown, and the once noisy mining area fell into a deathly silence. Gold mining ships and gold mining equipment were abandoned in the mining area in a mess. This former land of hope and fertile land for wealth was reduced to ruins. Farmers who have not received compensation for land expropriation for many years, and folks whose farmland was damaged by mining operations, began to regard this gold mining ship as a scapegoat. They began to quietly "dismember" the giant gold mining ship. All the electrical, crane, water supply and hydraulic equipment on the ship were stolen, the roof and roofs were completely demolished, and three 220-type bulldozers were unloaded. Only the chassis is left. In the end, this giant gold mining ship was dismantled by surrounding villagers, leaving only the bare hull and steel frame. A report from the County Gold Bureau at the time described the tragic situation in the mining area:

"Since June, the management and maintenance personnel have disappeared, and the assets and equipment of the gold mining ship and team headquarters have also been lost. From time to time, there have been reports of assets being stolen, transferred, and sold. By October 27, gold mining The equipment on the ship was also stolen and dismantled, ranging from circuits, electrical equipment to mechanical supporting equipment. From easy-to-get spare parts to fixed equipment, from the bow and stern to the inside and outside of the ship, everything was It was dismantled to pieces and was in a mess. A good gold mining ship turned into such a terrible mess due to lack of maintenance. Look at the situation of the gold mine again. The door is open and there is free access. Inside the courtyard It is overgrown with weeds and desolate. The doors and windows of the workshop and warehouse are broken. Most of the valuable instruments, equipment and parts have disappeared."

This magical and realistic gold-mining ship was like an alien spacecraft that suddenly landed at the foot of Daming Mountain and died suddenly and violently. Its golden "armor" was dismantled into strips of scrap copper and iron, and was sold as scrap by the angry villagers. And its body was like a beast, with only its bare skeleton left after being dismembered. The once dreamy "Golden City" turned into a desolate ruin with dead branches and leaves. Today, this magical history is forever buried deep underground in this citrus orchard, and the owner of this citrus orchard is driving an excavator in a remote rural area of ​​Cameroon, pushing down farmers' cocoa trees, and is buried in the ground more than ten meters deep. Grains of placer gold were quarried.

6

In the past ten years, Ah Ying has become accustomed to living in two places with a time difference of more than eight hours from Ah Hui. While Ah Ying was doing odd jobs in the morning, Ah Hui was still sleeping in the work shed in the mining area. When Ah Hui woke up in the morning, finished a bowl of rice noodles and started the excavator in the steamer-like operating room, Ah Ying had already finished work and went to school to pick up her two children from school, feed pigs, chickens, cook and bathe the children. After Ah Hui finished his day's work, Ah Ying and the children were already asleep. In the first few years of going to Ghana, Ah Hui drove more than 100 kilometers from the jungle-covered mining area to "Shanglin Street" in Kumasi every month. He made an overseas phone call to Ah Ying to report that she was safe and asked if she had received anything. to his salary and ask how she and her children are doing. Later, a satellite pot was installed on Ah Hui's construction site, but the signal was always not very good.

The last phone call between them was at around eight o'clock in Central Africa on November 26. Ah Hui called A Ying. At that time, his son and daughter had just finished school and were about to go to work. He said he wanted to see the two children through video. Aying told me: "He is a father who has been absent all year round. When he went to Africa, his eldest daughter was four years old, his son was only one year and two months old, and the younger one couldn't even call him daddy. He went to Africa for more than two years before he came back. He went back and stayed at home for a few months before going back. He actually missed home while he was away. The younger son called his father via video call and said, "Dad, let's eat!". His father said, "You can't dig out gold, and your father has no job." , I'm almost starving to death!" The younger one said: "There is so much food at home, vegetables and meat, you come back to eat, I will leave it for you." One year during the Qingming Festival he came back, after he finished his meal and took a shower, The younger son asked him: "Dad, are you going home tonight?", his father said: "Where should I go back?", the younger son said: "Go back to your home!", his father asked him: "My home Where is it?". The younger one said, "Isn't your home on a plane?" 』. "The younger son saw his father flying away and returning by plane, thinking that the plane was his father's home.

"The airplane is dad's home" is like a childish but cruel fairy tale. I can't help but think of the movie "Summer Solstice" made by a young local director: the story is based on a true story in his hometown village. The girl's Chinese teacher asked them to write "my father", but her father was mining gold in Africa. The child lives with her grandfather all year round. She doesn't know how to write "my dad". She thought for a long time before writing: "I miss my dad. Last week I received a new schoolbag that my dad bought for me. I like it very much. But I still hope that he can go home early and reunite with me and my grandpa." , I no longer have to go to such distant places to hunt for gold.” But this new schoolbag with Princess Elsa from Frozen on it is a cruel fairy tale. The child's schoolbag was taken home with her father's ashes. While the girl was reading the essay "My Dad" in the classroom, her grandfather burned paper in front of his son's grave in the barren mountains to pay homage. At the door of the primary school where the child studied, there was a map of the world with the words "Look around the world" written on it.

Over the years, Aying has both looked forward to and feared the phone calls from Africa. Because the phone call may be to report safety, or it may be to report mourning. Over the years, the village has heard from time to time that someone's man was robbed to death in Africa, someone's son was beaten to death from diarrhea, and someone's nephew was arrested and imprisoned by the local immigration bureau...especially the sudden calls at midnight and early in the morning. It always worries the people left behind in the village. A Ying clearly remembers one time, from the other end of the phone, A Hui kept laughing and said that all her dreams were sweet. The mine produced a lot of gold that month, and he received more than 20,000 yuan in salary plus commission. Before going to Africa, he only received more than 2,000 yuan working on the construction site at home. But not long after, one day in June 2013, Ah Ying received a hurried call from Ah Hui. She lowered her voice and whispered, "Don't worry, I'm safe. I'm fine." Then she hung up the phone in a hurry. Later, Aying learned that Ahui and six co-workers were hiding in the mountains and forests near a village in Kumasi. They escaped before the armed troops moved in to clean up the area.

At that time, a massive joint operation to clean up foreign small-scale mining swept across Ghana like a tropical storm. Tens of thousands of gold diggers and thousands of gold mining production lines in Ghana were the first to bear the brunt and suffered heavy losses. Troops and police armed with live ammunition raided the Shanglinren mining area along the Daffin and Ofin rivers. Excavators with unpaid loans were doused with gasoline and burned in raging fires; cars were impounded and the construction site was The buildings were destroyed and razed to the ground; the troops began to arrest the gold diggers in Shanglin everywhere, and the Shanglin people in Kumasi, Dunkwa, Obuasi and other places were running for their lives. At that time, Aying and the women left behind in the village were worried day and night. They saw in the news and photos sent back from Ghana that the construction sites of many Shanglin people in Ghana were in a mess, like a disaster site after a hurricane.

The fleeing gold diggers huddled in the cocoa forest with their guns in hand, daring not to make a sound. The shirtless worker, squatting on the ground with his head in his arms, was rounded up by local soldiers armed with submachine guns. The local immigration bureau's prison cell, which is less than 20 square meters, detained forty or fifty arrested gold diggers from Shanglin. Miners from Shanglin were also taken into custody one after another every day.

Aying saw the news on the CCTV news channel broadcasting "The Ghanaian government arrested 169 Chinese gold diggers" on TV, and her heart rose in her throat. Ah Hui couldn't get through on the phone, and she was so worried. She didn't know if Ah Hui was among the 169 people arrested, whether Ah Hui was alive or dead, or whether an unknown Chinese migrant worker had gone missing in Africa. Who should I turn to later.

On June 6, nearly a thousand family members of gold diggers gathered in front of the county government to protest, holding white banners reading "Ghanaian military and police violently enforce the law, Chinese compatriots were looted" and "Asking parents and officials to make decisions for compatriots". They were angry and helpless. An anxious A Ying also stood among the crowd.

Ten days later, Ah Ying finally received an urgent call from Ah Hui announcing that she was safe, and she temporarily let go of her worries. A month later, Ah Fai hurried back from Ghana, like a refugee surviving a disaster. There were scars on his back from the knife wounds caused by the robbers, and his legs and back were covered in red and swollen patches from the venomous mosquitoes in the rainforest. He looked dazed, unshaven, and looked much older. But after staying at home for four months, Ah Fai once again boarded a flight to Ghana. The mining land he invested in was burned down during the cleanup operation. The debt of hundreds of thousands and the living expenses of his family were like ticking alarms, leaving him with no choice or retreat. Eager to "turn over", he can only rush to this cross-border gold mining road where life and death are uncertain again.

Over the past 16 years, hundreds of unknown grassroots gold diggers like Ah Hui, who came from this poor place in southern China, have lost their lives on this cross-border gold panning road with uncertainties. Their deaths and bad luck finally appeared in a few straightforward and cold narrative sentences in foreign affairs bulletins or association announcements, becoming a piece of news, an official warning, a bloody lesson, and a piece of news that was circulated in this small place. an anecdote and a sigh:

"On April 8, 2020, a 45-year-old citizen of Shanglin County was robbed and died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The deceased went to Cameroon, Africa, to work in his cousin's gold mining site in November 2017, and has only been here since January 2020. He went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to work for a Zhejiang boss named Lin. He was divorced in 2006 and his son has grown up and is unemployed." "On the afternoon of August 6, 2020, near the gold mine in Dunqua Primeval Forest, Ghana, four armed robbers attacked two Shanglin gold prospectors who were returning to their residence from the construction site. Zhong was shot in the leg by the robbers. On the way to the hospital, he died of excessive blood loss. His family hopes that the local embassy can help transport the deceased's ashes back to the country." "On August 13, 2020, three Shanglin citizens were kidnapped by unidentified armed men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa. Their life and death are unknown." "On November 10, 2020, a citizen from Shanglin, Guangxi suffered from malaria in Mali and died of kidney failure. He had been engaged in gold mining in Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Congo-Brazzaville. In September this year, he went to work in the Republic of Mali, and his family The embassy can coordinate and help bring the ashes of the deceased back to the country for burial." "Everyone, please read (transliteration of Zhuang dialect, meaning brothers and sisters), Christmas and Ghana's general election are coming soon, and robbers have been very crazy recently. On the evening of November 28, 2020, a home invasion occurred in the Obuasi area of ​​Ashanti Province, Ghana During the robbery, two Shanglin citizens died on the spot. The deceased and his friends invested in gold mining in Ghana, and the construction site had just started less than two months ago." "On March 21, 2021, a Chinese citizen from Shanglin County, Mali, unfortunately died of respiratory failure due to infection with COVID-19. The patient had symptoms such as cough and fatigue in early March, and was diagnosed with COVID-19 during treatment in a US hospital. On March 10 On the same day, he was transferred to the COVID-19 ward of Mali Hospital. CT showed lung inflammation (about 50% of the damaged area) and blood oxygen saturation of about 90%. He was diagnosed with severe COVID-19. During hospitalization, the patient had poor appetite and sleep, and his condition progressed rapidly. , The reexamination CT results on March 19 showed extensive lung inflammation (about 90% of the damaged area). In the early morning of March 21, the patient's condition worsened and he died after rescue."...

These transnational miners, who are like tumbleweeds growing tenaciously in the desert, are full of exuberant energy and restless hope, searching for gold all over the world; but their movement ends prematurely and ends in the violent form of death. The pseudonym "someone" appeared in the brief official announcement. Nameless, they eventually became dark undead in the wild and mobile world, becoming wandering "wild ghosts". And the aftermath of their deaths will continue to shake families like Aying in the southern border of China.

(To respect the privacy of the interviewees, all characters in this article have adopted pseudonyms.)