Golden melon stone

Golden melon stone

This entry is compiled and applied by "popular science China" Science Encyclopedia

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Jinguashi is a settlement located in the northeast of Taiwan Island. Its administrative division is subordinate to Ruifang District, Xinbei city. It is located between the north edge of Xueshan mountains and the northeast coast. Because of their geographical proximity, Jinguashi and Jiufen are also important mining areas in the early period, so they are generally called "Jinjiu area".

brief introduction

Jinguashi is a settlement located in the northeast of Taiwan Island. Its administrative division is subordinate to Ruifang District, Xinbei city. It is located between the north edge of Xueshan mountains and the northeast coast. Because of their geographical proximity, Jinguashi and Jiufen are also important mining areas in the early period, so they are generally called "Jinjiu area".

The area is surrounded by mountains on three sides, bounded by Banping mountain (elevation 713 m) and nanyali of Banping River Basin in the East, canguangliao mountain (elevation 738.3 m) and Mudan mountain (elevation 656.9 m) in the South and Shuangxi District, and adjacent to Jiufen by Jilong mountain (elevation 586.8 m) and Jingua mountain (elevation 571.2 m) in the West. The terrain of this area is about 200 to 300 meters of hilly land and Intermountain Valley, belonging to Keelung Volcanic Group. There are Jinguashi stream, waijiufen stream and neijiufen stream in the area, cutting through the valley to the north and flowing into the East China Sea.

Jinguashi once flourished with Jiufen because of gold mining, but also rapidly declined with the depletion of mineral resources. At present, only four Li and a few elderly residents, such as xinshanli, guashanli, tongshanli and shishanli, live for a long time. Since the neighboring Jiufen became popular with the film "sad city" and successfully transformed into a tourist resort, Jinguashi has also re developed towards the direction of tourism and leisure. The film "silent hills" is based on the Jinguashi mining industry during the Japanese occupation.

Development and evolution

In 1890, when a railway bridge was built across the Keelung River at the foot of Keelung mountain, some workers found placer gold in the river. According to word of mouth, the workers soon caused a rush for gold in Keelung River, and the scope of gold washing sand extended up to longtandu (near today's Ruifang Railway station) at the foot of Keelung mountain. In 1893, a Chaozhou farmer surnamed Li finally found a small golden melon gold vein outcrop near Jiufen mountain area. Soon after the discovery of the small golden melon outcrop, gold miners also found a large golden melon outcrop nearby. The name "Jingua stone" comes from the fact that the mountain shape of big and small Jingua looks like a pumpkin, which is also called "Jingua" in Taiwanese. Keelung mountain, which was originally silent, began to prosper due to the discovery of large and small golden melon outcrops, which also opened the glorious years of Jiufen and golden melon stone mining industry in the future.

After the Sino Japanese War of 1895, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895. In 1896, the Japanese authorities promulgated the "Taiwan mining rules", which stipulated that only Japanese nationals could operate mining, depriving Taiwan natives of their mining rights. In October of the same year, the governor's office of Taiwan divided the mining area of Keelung mountain into two parts, Jinguashi mine in the eastern area and Ruifang mine in the western area (namely Jiufen mine), bounded by the north-south axis of Keelung mountain. The mining rights were obtained by the "Tanaka formation" of Japanese businessman Tanaka changbingwei and the "Fujita formation" of Fujita chuansanro. At that time, the development of mining industry in Japan had reached a certain level. After having the mining right of Jinguashi, Tanaka changbingwei had the mineral industry in Japan. Tanaka introduced advanced mining technology, equipment and a large number of technical personnel from Japan, and established a consistent system from mining to refining, which laid the foundation for the development of Jinguashi mine. In addition to mining in dajingua outcrop, the Tianzhong formation also began to excavate the pit downward. Because the pit is located in Benshan of Jinguashi, it is named "Benshan pit" (a total of nine pits), which has become an important mining source of Jinguashi mining area. In 1904, enargite was excavated in No.3 pit of Benshan. With the gradual downward excavation of the pit, the output of copper mined out from the deposit gradually increased, and the Jinguashi mine also changed from a gold silver mine to a gold silver copper mine. With the discovery of new veins one by one in the future, Jinguashi is known as "the first gold mine in Japan". In 1905, a copper refinery was built in shuijidong to deal with the copper mined from the Changren deposit.

At one time, Jinguashi encountered a bottleneck in its development. After the first World War, the global economic depression also affected the Jinguashi mining area. Not only was the refinery forced to close, but it had to rely on the export of ore to Japan to maintain its operation. After that, the operation right of the mining area changed to another Japanese businessman, Shintaro Haruki. Under the management of Shintaro houmiya, the performance of the Jinguashi mining area gradually recovered. After Japan Mining Co., Ltd. (the predecessor of today's mining metal) bought the management right of the Jinguashi mining area in 1933, it expanded the equipment in the mining area, built a new flotation mine (today's 13 storey site) on the slope of shuijidong at the foot of the Jinguashi mountain, and built another shuijidong straight line Jinguashi line (the predecessor of today's Taiwan Railway Shenzhen Macao line) is the light rail connecting badouzi mine in Keelung. With these new and perfect facilities and the discovery of new veins, the gold production in the Jinguashi mining area increased year by year, reaching a peak of nearly 70000 taels in 1938. At that time, Jinguashi was known as "the first precious metal mine in Asia", where 80000 people gathered to realize their dream of gold mining. The small Jinguashi became a densely populated and bustling place, reflecting each other with neighboring Jiufen.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War, Japan's war situation became increasingly tense, and the gold mine of non defense materials was ignored, and the main mining method of Jinguashi was copper mine. From 1942 to 1945, the Japanese army set up a labor camp for British prisoners of War (known as convex nose Tsai Liao in Taiwanese) here to detain more than 1000 Allied prisoners of war mainly from the member states of the British Federation Because of poor working conditions, strict management and acclimatization, many prisoners of war died here. Since the second half of 1944, the U.S. military gradually seized the air supremacy over Taiwan, and all kinds of industrial production activities were seriously affected. Before Japan surrendered in 1945, the mining industry of Jinguashi almost stopped, and the Allied prisoners of war also moved to Xindian for custody. After World War II, the Republic of China took over Taiwan. Under the reorganization of the national government, the operation of Jinguashi gradually stepped on the track. The national government (Ministry of Economic Affairs) took over the ownership of the Jinguashi mining area, which was originally owned by Japanese capital. In 1946, it was transferred to the resources committee to take over the ownership of the mining area and set up the "preparatory office for gold and copper mines in Taiwan" to plan the restoration and resumption of work. In 1948, "Taiwan gold and copper preparatory office" was changed to "Taiwan gold and copper mining bureau"; because the Jinguashi mining area belongs to the Taiwan gold and Copper Mining Bureau, the gold mine produced by Jinguashi was purchased by the Bank of Taiwan at the official price after refining. Although this method made the gold price stable, it also foreshadowed the future shutdown of the mining area. With the outbreak of the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the high cost of gold production, the production of copper in Jinguashi mining area was restarted, and the business model of "copper for gold" was cultivated.

In 1955, the Taiwan Gold Copper Mineral Bureau was reorganized into "Taiwan Metal Mining Co., Ltd." and foreign technology and equipment were introduced. With the increase of copper production year by year, the Jinguashi mining area maintained a good operating performance. However, after 1973, the output of gold and copper in Jinguashi mining area gradually dried up. In order to improve the output, Taijin began to try large-scale open-pit mining in 1978, and shifted its operation focus to mineral smelting and processing. In order to improve the capacity of mineral processing, Taijin borrowed money from the bank in 1981 to build lile copper refinery near shuijidong. However, due to the continuous decline of the international copper price, although Taijin company downsized its department in 1985 and transferred lile copper smelter to Taiwan electric power company for takeover, Taijin company finally closed down in 1987 when it was unable to repay the bank loan, and the land in the Jinguashi mining area was taken over by Taiwan sugar company, ending the century old golden years of Jinguashi. Today, with the stoping of the mine, the population of Jinguashi has dropped sharply to less than 2000, most of them are old people and young children.

Current situation

Although the mining business of Jinguashi has been terminated, it may still have considerable mineral reserves. In 2002, an Australian mining company evaluated the mineral and speculated that it still has the value of mining minerals. However, there is still no consensus on whether to reopen the mine. Australia, Canada, the United States, South Africa and other mining companies once wanted to participate in gold mining. In 2003, they cooperated in exploration and assessed that there are still more than 200 metric tons and more than 200 billion yuan of gold deposits in Jinguashi. The discovery channel program also broadcast "mystery Taiwan - Jinguashi". However, the new smelting method has a great impact on the environment and has been opposed by many environmentalists. Mountain blasting mining is very harmful to the geological ecology, and it is not that Chinese people are unable to master the mining technology. Nevertheless, with the prosperity of the neighboring Jiufen after the 1990s driven by the tourism industry, and with the promotion of the government and local residents, Jinguashi is also moving towards the development of cultural tourism.

In recent years, as the population of Jinguashi is relatively sparsely populated, compared with the neighboring Jiufen, it is less crowded

Chinese PinYin : Jin Gua Shi