He asks not to be identified, understandably given the authorities have launched a crackdown to silence workers who have been protesting over months’ of unpaid wages.

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The dangerous nature of front line miners means they are entitled to higher wages than the average factory worker. Yet miners across northeastern China have faced months of missing payments – a matter which prompted thousands of them to take to the streets of Shuangyashan city in a recent protest.

“What do you want me to say? The urge to kill those who have exploited us comes to mind every time I think about my wages,” he says, rubbing his forehead with deformed fingers.

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The protests were sparked by a reckless comment made by Heilongjiang governor Lu Hao on the sidelines of the recent National People’s Congress. Lu had claimed that “not one of the 80,000 front-line mining workers” for the state-run Longmay firm was behind on pay.

The remarks sent workers onto the streets in a peaceful protest that lasted days before being dispersed by police forces. So large was the protest that extra police were required from neighbouring city Jiamusi.

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The action had an immediate impact due to the politically sensitive timing. Lu retracted his words and the Longmay subsidiary Shuangyashan Mining Industry Group, a struggling state-enterprise that controls most of the city’s livelihood, began writing cheques.

But when the workers received them, many noticed their pay had been subject to random reductions of up to 50 per cent.

The pay slips of the 46-year-old show that when he finally received his wages from last October to January – which did not happen until mid-March following the protest – there had been numerous deductions.

In October alone, he worked 31 days straight with no day off and received less than 5,000 yuan (HK$5,950). Some 49.7 per cent of what he had been owed had been randomly deducted.

In November, his wage was again just half of what it should have been – this time because he was blamed for failing to meet a production target.

“Then a falling rock hit my eye so I had to take time off for a retina surgery,” he recalls.

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“I had to borrow 3,000 yuan just to make it through Chinese New Year. My wife who has never need to work in the past is now washing dishes in a restaurant down town.”

The protests by the Shuangyashan workers triggered similar actions by their counterparts in the mining and steel industries across China’s old rust belt, many of whom were also waiting on unpaid wages.

Thousands of workers from the Tonghua Iron and Steel Group in Jilin province, Qiqihaer in Heilongjiang, Kaiping in Heibei, and Pingxiang in Jiangxi, demonstrated over unpaid wages, in protests that took place between the end of February and the middle of March

The human impact of the problem is massive. In Shuangyashan alone, there are at least eight major state-owned mines plus countless smaller scale ones owned by private businessmen.

Most of the state-owned mines come with an independent community with school, medical and judicial institutions built in.

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In Qixing mine, there are only about 1,000 workers left, down from an estimated 30,000 at its peak. The rest have been transferred to other lines of work in an effort to reduce redundancies.

What is left of the Qixing industrial area looks like an abundant factory that breeds nothing but weeds. Loud speakers broadcast slogans about discounted undergarments to an almost empty community plaza where workers and their family once gathered.

Heilongjiang Longmay Mining Holding Group is a state enterprise set up in 2008 that overseas a number of local mining corporations, including Shuangyashan, Jixi, Hegang and Qitaihe.

Longmay, which has 250,000 employees, has been experiencing tremendous losses – 800 million yuan in 2012 to 6 billion yuan in 2014 – as sales and coal prices drop.

In June 2014, the Heilongjiang provincial government allotted 3 billion yuan in financial assistance to alleviate Longmay’s problems. Yet in the first quarter of 2015 the group still lost 3.38 billion yuan.

Clearly, the protests are a sensitive issue. Mining workers and employees of companies owned by Shuangyashan Mining Industry Group have been ordered to stay away from reporters. Local authority workers chase prying journalists away. At least three people interviewed by the South China Morning Post were later harassed by police.

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A mining team leader, 47, who missed out on 30,000 yuan in 2015 alone due to the random wage deductions, echoed the downbeat sentiment of the Dongbaowei miner.

“Even firecrackers were not as loud this Lunar New Year, people just don’t have that kind of spare money to burn anymore,” he says.

Coal prices have dropped from 2,000 yuan per tonne during the glory years a decade ago to just 400 yuan per tonne this year, he says.

“Where is all the profit you get from working during those good years? Has the money been pocketed by officials? How can they leave us behind and let us starve when things go bad?” he asks.

Some of his colleagues above ground received only a few hundred yuan a month, he says; in some extreme cases, they had been paid less than one yuan some months due to the deductions.

“I know many are even struggling to afford the 2.5 yuan bus ride to work everyday but they have to keep clocking in for fear of being sacked so some skip fares to get by.”

A Qixing mine worker, 44, says the miners had little option but to protest.

“I really don’t know how long I can go on. I am planning to quit after this month and seek work elsewhere,” he says.

“We are not rioters, we simply want to get back what we have worked so hard for.”