Page 219 - updated on July

Yu Jihui: “A Stinking Old Ninth – A Tale of the Coal Capital” (updated on July 2020)

both graduates from a university of mining and

technology. After they graduated from their alma

mater and were assigned to our coal mine, they were

allocated to work in the large coal pit. Their job was

to dig coal there. At that time, even the graduates

from the best universities had to work in the coal pit.

Big Li was so nicknamed because the guy was big

and tall. He got married. He was about thirty-five

years old – a few years older than I. He graduated a

few years earlier than I did. His wife was a farmer

who lived in a village close to a sea. It was about

three hundred kilometers away. On holidays, he went

back home to see her. He was the only man who had

a wife in our bedroom. For this, he was proud of

himself.

Xiao Wang, as the name suggested, was small

and short. He was also in the middle of his thirties.

He was a single man too. We were all Stinking Old

216