New Pingxi Taiwan-Japan Coal Mine Culture Special Exhibition: Miners Dance the Miners' Dance Together

Pingxi is not just about sky lanterns! Under the guidance of the New Taipei City Cultural Affairs Bureau, the New Pingxi Coal Mine Museum Park is holding the "Coal‧Memory - Taiwan-Japan Coal Mine Culture Special Exhibition," running from October 10 to November 30, a total of 2 months. The exhibition borrows from the Tagawa Coal and History Museum in Japan the "miner paintings" of Yamamoto Sakubei, a painter who documented miners and coal mines in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, and whose paintings are renowned for being inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. It is hoped that through abandoned mines, artifacts and paintings, Taiwanese and Japanese miners can find the memories of coal that they share.

Zhou Chaonan, now 72 years old, once served as the manager of the Pingxi Coal Mine. This exhibition also displays photographs he has treasured for many years that record the figures of miners, including miners gathering at the pit entrance waiting to go down, riding the mine cart into the pit, and bathing together after coming out, from the actual working conditions of miners to the little details of their daily lives. These are invaluable for lifting the black veil on work in the mines and letting everyone understand the hard struggles of miners in the past.

Gong Junyi, general manager of the New Pingxi Coal Mine Museum Park, said the exhibition also displays several dozen works from Yamamoto Sakubei's miner paintings, which are listed by UNESCO as Memory of the World heritage. What makes his paintings most special is that almost every painting records in text the miners' mining process and their feelings. Although Taiwanese and Japanese miners had different nationalities, the places where they mined and their daily lives were astonishingly similar. Gong Junyi hopes that through this event, everyone can together recover the coal mining memories of the past and their feelings for the land.

The event also specially combines the museum anniversary with a "Miners Return Home" activity, inviting old miners to return to the mine wearing the clothes and equipment they wore to work back then, to reminisce.