Memoirs of Miners

• Prize
  Silver in Editorial/Personality
• Photographer
  Chin-Fa Tzeng

Taiwan closed its last coal mine in 2000. The coal industry has become history, and the lives of miners have become memories. At the Xinpingxi Coal Mine Museum in New Taipei City, Taiwan, I chanced upon an old miner who was over 80 years old and was looking for memories of past life. He said: "The coal miners are corpses that have been in the soil but not yet buried." Every day, riding a trolley into the mine under the steaming of water vapor, working in the dangerous and dark underground is full of a helpless but tenacious attitude towards life of fighting for survival. Still alive!