Oct. 14 to Oct. 20
After working above ground for two years, Chang Kui (張桂) entered the Yamamoto coal mine for the first time, age 16. It was 1943, and because many men had joined the war effort, an increasing number of women went underground to take over the physically grueling and dangerous work.
“As soon as the carts arrived, I climbed on for the sake of earning money; I didn’t even feel scared,” Chang tells her granddaughter Tai Po-fen (戴伯芬) in The last female miner: The story of Chang Kui (末代女礦工: 張桂故事), which can be found on the Frontline Fellowship Web site. “The first time I went in, because the roof of the mine was so low, I hit my head on a beam.”
Photo courtesy of New Taipei City Cultural Affairs Department
Chang’s job was to push the minecarts through the tunnels, which was especially taxing for her diminutive stature of under 150cm tall. She worked barefoot so it would be easier to use her feet to slow down the car while going downhill, and like the men, she urinated where she stood — it was so dark that nobody could see anyway, she recalls. She worked while menstruating, emerging from the suffocating mines with her pants covered in blood.
At that time, Tai writes, Japanese miners earned about 1.8 times more than their Taiwanese male counterparts, and Taiwanese males made between 1.3 to 2.1 times more than females. If the mine wasn’t doing well, the women and children were the first to have their hours cut.
The Republic of China (ROC) government banned women from working inside the mines in 1964. Mortality rates were high, and many children in mining towns lost both parents in accidents. The authorities hoped to ensure that at least the mother survived. However, women continued to labor outside the mines, performing tasks such as ore transport and coal washing — and some mines continued to illegally send women underground.
Photo: CNA
The oft-ignored role of women in mines has received much attention in recent years. The New Taipei City government launched a program in 2020 to promote the history of female miners in Pingsi District’s (平溪) Jingtong Township (菁桐). Tai turned her article into a book in March, and earlier this week, the Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister paper) reported that nine former female mine workers in Jingtong had completed training as tour guides.
WOMEN IN MINES
Photo courtesy of New Taipei City Cultural Affairs Department
Although in small numbers, women worked in the mines since at least the turn of the century, often alongside their husbands. While they played more of a supporting role, they took part in all the tasks the men performed, Tai writes. Many also helped with above ground operations such as coal transport and preparation; in addition they were often asked to cook, boil bath water and do other odd jobs.
In 1928, women were banned from underground work in Japan, but the colonizers appeared to encourage it in Taiwan, Tai writes. The Japanese-owned Jinbaoli Gold Mine (金包里) in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里), for example, once publicly commended and rewarded a married couple for working underground together.
As the war worsened and supplies dwindled, Chang continued toiling in a constant state of hunger. It wasn’t much better after the war — it didn’t matter who ruled Taiwan, Chang says, she still rarely had enough to eat.
Photo courtesy of New Taipei City Cultural Affairs Department
She left the Yamamoto mine when it temporarily closed after the Japanese left. In 1955, the prominent Lee family (瑞芳李家) bought the mine and renamed it Haishan (海山). In 1958, they opened a new tunnel in Chang’s hometown of Matsutien (媽祖田) in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城), and her husband was among its first miners. Chang continued to work long hours above ground while cooking, cleaning and caring for the family.
Tragedy soon struck, as Chang’s husband and a fellow miner died in a tunnel explosion that same year. Such was the fate of countless mining families, leaving the wives to support the family on their own. Chang had also developed pneumoconiosis from her time in the mines, and was frequently out of breath.
She eventually found a caring partner in one of the mine’s foremen, but he also developed pneumoconiosis and died in 1975. Chang could only put down her head and continue to do all sorts of hard labor to support her children and relatives.
BANNING WOMEN UNDERGROUND
In 1963, a serious mine explosion in Pingsi claimed the lives of two couples, the incident reportedly orphaning 11 children. It’s said that then-first lady Soong Mei-ling (宋美齡) had been pushing to ban women from going underground after visiting a mining town and seeing the numerous orphans there, and this tragedy finally prompted the authorities to act.
However, the ban also made life harder for widows trying to support their families, as the above ground pay was about 40 percent lower despite the work also being physically taxing.
There were other reasons as well — a National Museum of Taiwan History entry states that many believed that it was bad luck for women to enter a mine, and others found it improper for scantily clad men and women to work alongside each other in the tunnels that could reach up to 40 degrees in the summer. And because of these concerns, the fact that women once worked in the mines was eventually “hidden.”
After the ban, women continued to play a major role in the demanding mining operations once the coal was transported out of the tunnel, including processing, loading, transport, waste disposal and machinery maintenance.
Jingtong’s Yang Kui-hsin (楊桂馨) story is typical of those times — her father began working in the mines at eight years old, developed pneumoconiosis by 29 and died at 42. Her mother, great aunt, aunts and sisters all helped process coal to keep the family afloat. She first began working at the mines at the age of 15. Her mother was in charge of carrying heavy pipes, which eventually crushed her spine, leaving her with a permanently hunched back.
“She did everything to support our family,” she says in a Gala Television (八大電視) special on female mine workers.
INDUSTRY’S DEMISE
The mines began closing during the 1970s as the nation shifted away from relying mainly on coal for energy.
Disaster struck Haishan Mine’s Jiancheng Tunnel on June 20, 1984, where Chang was in charge of boiling water for the hundreds of miners to bathe in. A tunnel explosion killed 74 people and injured 31, and although Chang didn’t see it happen, she could smell the stench of human flesh for a long time afterward. After compensating the victims’ families, the mine resumed operations.
In December, the nearby Haishan Tunnel No. 1 in New Taipei City’s Sansia District (三峽), where Chang’s brother worked, also suffered a catastrophic explosion, claiming 93 lives with just one survivor (see “Taiwan in Time: Surviving on human flesh and a prayer,” Dec. 3, 2017). An anguished Chang rushed to the scene, and later found out that her brother had left the tunnel early after suddenly feeling uneasy. He was also trying to avoid debtors who would be waiting for him to get off work.
Nearly 300 miners died that year, prompting the government to clamp down on the mines that had lax safety standards, and begin phasing out the industry.
Haishan Mine shut down in 1989, but Chang continued to work at the company’s office until she finally retired in 1995.
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