The director raised his hands toward the sea of faces.

“The sky won’t fall!”

The crowd stood frozen. It seemed as if even their breathing had ceased.

“Out of all of China’s industrial workers, all of its proletariat, none has a longer history than us. None has a history with more hardship and tumult than ours. Has the sky fallen for miners? No! That all of us can stand here and look at that old coal column is proof of that. Our sky won’t fall. It never did, and it never will!

“Hardship? There’s nothing new about that, comrades. When have we miners ever had it easy? From the time of our ancestors, when have miners ever had an easy day in their lives? Rack your brains: Of all the industries and all the professions in China and the rest of the world, are any of them harder than ours? None. None at all. What’s new about hardship? If it were easy, now that would be surprising. We’re holding up both the sky and the earth! If we feared hardship, we’d have died out long ago.

“But talented people have been thinking of solutions for us as society and science have advanced. Now we have a solution, one that has the hope of totally transforming our lives, bringing us out of the dark mines and into the sun to mine coal beneath blue skies! Miners will have the world’s most enviable job. This hope has now arrived. Don’t take my word for it, but look at the pillars of fire shooting skyward in the south valley. But these efforts have caused a catastrophe. We will explain all of this in detail later. Right now all you need to understand is that this may be the very last hardship for miners. This is the price for our wonderful tomorrow. So let’s stand together and face it. As so many generations have before—again, the sky hasn’t fallen!”

The crowd dispersed in silence. Liu Xin said to the director, “I’ve known you and my father, and I can die without regret.”

“Act, and think of nothing else,” the director said, clapping Liu Xin on the shoulder, then gripped him in an embrace.

*

The day after demolition work commenced on Shaft No. 4, Liu Xin and Li Minsheng walked side by side through the main tunnel, their footsteps echoing emptily. They were passing the first blast area, and in the dim light of their headlamps, they could see the boreholes densely distributed in the high ceiling, and the colorful waterfall of detonation wires streaming toward a pile on the floor.

Li Minsheng said, “I used to hate the mine. Hate it, because it consumed my youth. But now I realize that I’ve become one with it. Hate it or love it, it’s what my youth was.”

“We shouldn’t torture ourselves,” Liu Xin said. “We’ve done something with our lives, at least. If we’re not heroes, then at least we’ve gone down fighting.”