Li Shuanlin remembers the sweltering hot August day nine years ago when his mine shaft collapsed and, with it, life as he knew it.
A coal miner since the age of 24, he was fully aware of the dangers of his profession, but always thought it would happen to someone else.
His pelvis was shattered and he understood he would be chained to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
”When I was young, I was very strong. I could lift 100kg. So when I realised I would never be able to walk again, I really wanted to die. I saw no reason to live on,” says Li, now aged 45.
Now he is part of a small community of cripples who live together at the state-run Dongshan Mine Hospital on the outskirts of Taiyuan, China’s gray and dusty coal capital.
This is where most of them were brought in the minutes after the accidents that ruined their lives, and as the years have passed, many have simply decided to stay on.
Some of them have nowhere else to go, having been abandoned by their family after they lost their ability to make money.
”My wife left me after I had my accident,” says 43-year-old Qi Wenliang, who has been in a wheelchair for 15 years. ”She’s still in Taiyuan, living with another man, but I don’t know exactly where.”
Wang Gengfu, who is 41 and has been crippled for eight years, is somewhat luckier.
”I’ve been relying on my wife since my accident, but we still live apart,” he says.
The cripples typically are paid 520 yuan ($52) a month, and it is hardly enough to get by, especially because several have children and need to pay tuition to ensure their education and save them from the mines.
Numbering about 50, they live in tiny rooms, where their scarce belongings are tucked into corners or in shelves.
”We’ve got nothing to do here. All we can do, with our infirmities, is chat and play cards. There’s no denying our lives are just so boring,” says Li.
If it was not for the noise of buses and motorcycles just outside the wall, this could be an isolated island in the middle of the ocean.
The members of the community rarely venture outside the bleak brick compound that they call home.
They prefer not to face the startling lack of compassion that have been the fate of handicapped people anywhere in the world, at all times.
”We like to stay together here. The moment we venture outside we’ll encounter lack of respect. People think we’re no use,” says Li.
However, he reserves his greatest bitterness for the management of the mine where he was injured.
”The mine’s making good money, and it could easily afford to help us out,” he says.
”But since we can’t work anymore, the mine’s management just doesn’t even pretend to care.”
It is with mixed feelings that they see the mines in the mountains around Taiyuan devour new generations of miners in an age when the Chinese economy needs fuel more than ever before.
”Everyone is afraid of dying, but they have no choice but to work in the mines,” says Qi. – AFP
