Dressed in a white shirt and gray trousers, 52-year-old Yang Zhaoxin was smelling a bouquet of moth orchids while occasionally adjusting his collar. “Just look at this! It's been an entire day and my clothes are still immaculate. Can you believe it? My small coal village has completely transformed into a camping site!” Photo shows the scenery of Fenglin village, Longtan town, Yongding district, Longyan city, southeast China’s Fujian Province.
(Photo/Yang Zhihao) Yang is a villager from Fenglin village, Longtan town, Yongding district, Longyan city, southeast China’s Fujian Province. During its heyday, the town was home to over 500 coal mines. The local community’s livelihoods were tied to the underground coal reserves.
Yang, for instance, ran a coal truck weighing station, and led a prosperous life. “But people were really covered in soot and looked terrible,” Yang recalled with a sigh as he thought about the days when coal dust filled the air. In the village, there was a saying that, “one doesn’t wear white in the mining area because everything turns black from the dust.
” With the sinking ground, destruction of vegetation, erosion of soil, and dust filling the air, various ecological repercussions started to surface. Longtan town started to shut down unlicensed coal mines in 2012, prompting the villagers to question how they were going to make a living without the mines. As luck would have it, Wanhua Landscape Co.
, Ltd. (Wanhua) was looking for a suitable.