Page 7 - updated on July

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

In August I left the school at last. By then I was

already in my late twenties. According to the Chinese

traditional marriage standard, I had already become a

Big Single man and had gone into the “abandoned

group” or “difficult group”.

I was assigned to a middle school affiliated to an

open coalmine in the city of Fushen, which was

known as the Coal Capital. The city was worthy of

the name. Everywhere you could see heaps of coal.

Everything was covered with coal dust. The houses,

the water in the streams, the roads and the trees all

were blackened. Even the sky was overcast. The

dogs, the cats, and the birds flying in the sky were

black. If a person put on a clean white shirt in the

morning, the collar of it would become black in the

evening. People’s faces always looked dusty.

The school was close to the administrative

building of the open coal mine - a white, five-storey

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