Li Minsheng jumped up and glared back at him, jabbing a finger at the gray world at the foot of the hill. “When did the mine turn into that? Do you still recognize it?” Then he sat down heavily again. “Our fathers were such a proud group. Such a proud, grand group of miners. Take my dad. He was a level-eight worker2 and earned a hundred and twenty yuan a month. A hundred and twenty yuan in the Chairman Mao era, no less.”

Liu Xin was silent for a moment, then tried to change the subject. “How’s your family? Your wife … uh, something Shan, is it?”

Li Minsheng smiled thinly. “Last year she told me she was taking a work trip, told her work unit she was taking annual leave, and took our daughter and left me and vanished. Two months later she sent a letter, posted from Canada, in which she said she had no wish to waste her life with a dirty coalman.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. You’re a senior engineer!”

“Same difference.” Li Minsheng swept his hand about them. “To those who’ve never been below, it’s all the same. We’re all dirty coalmen. Do you remember how badly we wanted to become engineers?”

“Those were the days of record-chasing production,” Liu Xin said. “We brought our fathers lunch. It was the first time we’d been down the shaft, and it was so dark down there. I asked my father and those standing near him, ‘How do you know where the coal seam is? How do you know where to dig the tunnels? And how are you able to get two tunnels dug from different directions to meet so precisely so far down?’ And your father answered, ‘Child, no one knows except for the engineers.’ And when we got to the surface, he pointed out a few men carrying hard hats and clipboards, and said, ‘Look, those are engineers.’ Do you remember that, Minsheng? Even we could see that they were different. The towels around their necks, at least, were a bit whiter. We’ve achieved that childhood dream now. Of course, it’s not all that glorious, but we have to at least fulfill our duty and accomplish something. Otherwise, won’t we be betraying ourselves?”

“That’s enough,” Li Minsheng said, standing up with a sudden anger. “I’ve been doing my duty this whole time. I’ve been accomplishing things. But you? You’re living in a dream! Do you really believe you can bring miners up from the mines? Turn this mine into a gas field? Say all that theory is correct and your test succeeds. So what? Have you calculated the cost of the thing? Also, how are you going to lay tens of thousands of kilometers of pipe? You realize that we can’t even pay rail shipping fees these days?”