aeeble

During the heyday of the Hou-tong coal mines, countless miners’ families moved in. The company dormitories were known as “liao-za”; inside Hou-tong you still find Nei-liao-za, San-zuo-liao, Wu-zuo-liao, Fan-za-liao, and Mei-yuan-cuo—all of them miners’ barracks. Most were partitioned with wooden boards; a single light-bulb socket, set into a small hole in the plank wall, served two households, and kitchens, washrooms and toilets were shared. Though the buildings looked like two-storey structures, inside they were divided into three levels; each cramped space behind one window housed an entire family. At its peak, more than a thousand people lived in these dormitories—children studied, slept and ate within the confines of that single window bay. After the government ordered the pits closed, the population drained away, leaving only the silent dormitories to stand before later generations as witnesses to the miners’ way of life.