Source:
https://scmp.com/lifestyle/entertainment/article/3081852/its-better-dying-hunger-plight-chinese-miners-deadly-lung
Lifestyle/ Entertainment

‘It’s better than dying of hunger’: plight of Chinese miners with deadly lung disease exposed in new documentary

  • Miners, the Horsekeeper and Pneumoconiosis tells the story of an iron ore miner in Hunan, central China, dying of lung disease after toiling in an illegal mine
  • The film can only be seen at private screenings, says director Jiang Ningxie, because he won’t submit it to censors. Film censorship is too strict, he says
Chinese iron ore miner Zhao Pinfeng, who died from pneumoconiosis in 2018, is featured in new documentary Miners, the Horsekeeper and Pneumoconiosis.

From the age of 15, Zhao Pinfeng worked for two decades as an iron ore miner in a remote, mountainous area of Hunan province in central China.

Several years ago Zhao, who by then had two children and whose wife is mentally challenged, was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis, a fatal lung disease. He lost the ability to work and had to breathe through a ventilator. On one fateful night in 2018, an electricity outage at his village stopped his ventilator. He died the next day.