Inside Hong Kong’s abandoned mines

Exploration geologist Jackie Chu Chun-tak splashes through cold, ankle-deep water as he progresses further into the gloom of the dark, narrow tunnel, carved out of solid granite. This abandoned mine is not for the claustrophobic and it’s potentially dangerous for those who don’t know what to look out for.

Chu admits he rarely allows groups under his direction to venture this far beyond Portal 8, for safety reasons, but Post Magazine has been afforded special access to the underground secrets of the Needle Hill tungsten mine.

The tunnel is an adit, a horizontal passage, about 1.5 metres high and two metres wide, which connects the partially sealed portal, and the outside world, to the quartz vein that extends vertically through the mine and contains the valuable wolframite ore, from which tungsten is extracted. This adit has not been worked for some 50 years and the only remnants of a once-thriving industry are rotting ladders, disappearing trolley tracks and porcelain guides for wire telephone lines protruding from the jagged walls.

“We won’t go any further, it’s not safe,” says Chu, as the beam from his powerful torch illuminates a pile of granite boulders the size of large suitcases, which have fallen from the collapsed roof.

While working for a mining consultancy in Kazakhstan, Chu and a colleague, Jacky Chan Sik-lap, decided to write a book titled Hong Kong Mining History (2015). It was a labour of love rather than a commercial venture but they have sold more than 1,500 copies and the weekend group tours to disused mines Chu leads are usually oversubscribed.

Above Chu’s head, the large gap where the quartz vein once was rises to the upper reaches of a network of adits and shafts that extends for more than 3km, through Needle Hill, adjacent to the Lower Shing Mun Reservoir. The Shing Mun Tunnel Road passes within a metre of the bottom of the extensive mine network.