Former mines are being turned into public gardens and tourist attractions as China looks to a post-coal future, but the transition has not been smooth
Red koi fish dart between lily pads and lotuses. Strangler figs and mango trees stretch towards a delicately latticed roof. Few would guess that an abandoned coal mine lies beneath this beautiful botanical garden in Taiyuan, the capital of northern China’s Shanxi province.
“[This area] was all black,” Ding Yiju tells TWOC. As the lead coordinator for the Taiyuan Botanical Garden project, he recalls the early stages of construction in 2015. “We even took a block of coal back to Austria, to show our team in Europe.”
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New Goal for Coal: The Struggle to Repurpose China’s Abandoned Mines is a story from our issue, “New Game.” To read the entire issue, become a subscriber and receive the full magazine.
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