Like most post-industrial nations, Taiwan has a profuse legacy of tangible and intangible heritage from over a century of economic development. The island is abundant in minerals, particularly in the volcanic northeastern region, with coal formations from the three Miocene ages 23 to 5 million years ago. In the 1700s sulfur was collected by the Indigenous population from around volcanic vents and traded to Chinese merchants, who used it in the manufacture of gunpowder. The Chinese government during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) introduced industrial coal mining to Taiwan in 1877, when a British engineer was commissioned to design the first deep mine shaft. Taiwan’s main coal seams were very narrow, ranging from 28 to 100 centimeters in width, making mining extremely difficult.
During the period of Japanese rule (1895-1945), coal mining was prioritized to power trains, ships and machinery for processing everything from sugarcane to lumber. By 1915 coal mines in New Taipei City’s Haishan area produced the largest volume of Taiwan coal, with 20,000 to 30,000 tons going through Yingge railway station each month. Post World War II, coal extraction continued apace, and the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s marked the most prosperous period for the industry as it continued to fuel Taiwan’s industrial growth. Collieries were ubiquitous throughout northern Taiwan in sites that today are part of urban Taipei City, such as Nangang, Wanlong, Jingmei and Xinyi, as well as the extensive mines in New Taipei’s Pingxi District.
As in every other country, mining was hard and dangerous, but with Taiwan’s narrow carbon veins and tropical climate, laborers faced extreme physical challenges. Their toil powered Taiwan’s essential heavy industries, including iron, steel and electricity production as well as transport. Coal sheltered Taiwan through the global oil crisis of the 1970s and allowed the country to continue its upward economic trajectory. By the 1980s cheap coal imports and a series of mining tragedies closed the majority of mines for good, with a few operating through into the 1990s. There are 394 former collieries in Taiwan, and through initiatives by individual former miners, supported by the Ministry of Culture’s Bureau of Cultural Heritage, the memory of those who brought about Taiwan’s economic miracle is being honored at the sites where they once worked.
The rise and fall in the fortunes of Taiwan’s gold, copper and coal industries were very different. Systematic mining for gold and copper in northeastern Taiwan’s Ruifang District at Jinguashi and Jiufen brought affluence to the area, as copper was crucial to both industrial machinery and the arms industry. Jinguashi’s gold output reached a peak in 1938 when it produced 2.6 tons of gold, making it Asia’s top precious metal mine. The district’s mining industry grew steadily in the first decades of the 20th century, but the precious metal ore petered out in Jiufen in the early 1970s and in Jinguashi in the mid-1980s, leading to a population exodus and an economic decline.
However, the architectural remains of wealth created a picturesque environment waiting to be explored by a new generation. Hou Hsiao-hsien’s (侯孝賢) two poignant and internationally successful movies–1986’s “Dust in the Wind” and 1989’s “A City of Sadness”–established Jiufen as a tourist site, while the mere rumor that Studio Ghibli’s “Spirited Away” animation was set there sealed its reputation and drew yet more visitors. The rugged landscape, the historic excitement of the gold rush and the monumental and mysterious remains of the Shuinandong processing plant all have a certain romance and have acted as a catalyst to appreciation of past industrial heritage and examination of its concomitant history as integral elements that built contemporary Taiwan.