My Gold Rush Career Begins in 1984

Chapter 37 Diwozi

Peng Yuanchao understood Zhou Jingming's meaning.

The group was a temporary organization, and they weren't familiar with or trust each other enough.

Before they start working, let them see real gold and silver with their own eyes. This will dispel their doubts that they can find gold here, prove their ability to find gold, and put their minds at ease.

Secondly, we need to stimulate everyone's enthusiasm for work, so that they can work diligently and avoid causing trouble.

Once they see gold, these novices with ulterior motives won't leave even if you chase them away; they'll definitely have no complaints.

Peng Yuanchao looked at the excrement in the sand pit, and asked Xu Youliang to bring him a shovel with a handle that hadn't been wedged in yet. He personally shoveled the excrement out and threw it into the riverbed. He also shoveled out the backfilled mud and sand and dumped it to one side until the bottom was reached.

Zhou Jingming then had Wu Yang bring a golden bucket, and waited for Peng Yuanchao to use a shovel to dig out some mud and sand from the pit and shovel it into the golden bucket before walking towards the river.

Everyone immediately followed.

Zhou Jingming squatted on a pebble in the shallow water by the river, put the gold bucket into the cool water, and gently shook it along the surface. The mud turned into murky water and floated away, while the larger pebbles and sand were pushed to the outside. Finally, the small clump of black sand at the bottom of the gold bucket dispersed with the water as it was shaken out, revealing three small grains of golden sand.

This was the first time these novices had ever seen natural gold in their lives, and they were both curious and excited.

Zhou Jingming gathered the three grains of gold dust together and handed them to Wu Yang with his finger. Several novices immediately surrounded him, one taking a look and another taking a closer look, their eyes practically glued to the ground. Yet, they even consciously controlled their breathing, as if afraid of exhaling too much and blowing the gold dust out of their palms.

Seeing their cautious and curious expressions, Zhou Jingming found it amusing.

But thinking back to when I first came into contact with gold dust, wasn't it the same?

Don't be fooled by the fact that it's just three grains of gold the size of wheat bran; gold is really heavy, and you can clearly feel its "heavy" weight pressing down on your skin.

When the group had seen enough, Peng Yuanchao took out the small glass penicillin bottle he had used to store the gold particles last time, took the gold dust, put it together with the two gold particles he had obtained during the reconnaissance, put on the rubber stopper, and waved it in front of each of their ears.

The crisp sound of gold dust hitting glass resonated in everyone's heart.

"Work hard, comrades! Many parts of the riverbeds in these mountains contain gold dust, but places like this, where you can pan for gold with just a small shovel of mud and sand, are really rare. Whether we can protect this place in the future depends on everyone's efforts."

Peng Yuanchao put the glass bottle into his pocket: "Next, what we need to do is set up camp and hurry up. Whether we can find a warm place to shelter from the wind and rain as soon as possible depends on how hard everyone works."

Upon seeing the gold, everyone seemed excited, as if they had forgotten their fatigue, and nodded in agreement.

Afterwards, Peng Yuanchao instructed Wu Yang and Xu Youliang to lead the rest of the men into the woods on the hillside to select some wooden handles and attach them to the shovels and pickaxes they had brought into the mountain.

After the group grabbed axes and went into the woods behind the small peninsula, Peng Yuanchao handed Zhou Jingming a cigarette: "Brother, where do you think would be a good place to build a dugout on this small peninsula?"

“We can’t build it on an island. If we’re going to build it, we should build it at the foot of the slope, somewhere higher than the riverbank.”

Zhou Jingming turned to look at the hillside behind him: "Just make sure to control the area around the small peninsula."

Peng Yuanchao looked at the hillside and then at the small peninsula: "It's about forty or fifty meters away. Isn't that a bit far? If you ask me, the small peninsula is better. It's more convenient to see things from there."

“It doesn’t matter if it’s far, it’s just a few steps away, it’s not like we can’t see it. This mountain is different from the Gobi Desert. Although there is little rainfall, during the rainy season from June to August, there can be several days of rain in a row, and even heavy rainstorms. If it rains too much and floods, the dugouts built on the small peninsula may be flooded, and then we won’t even have a place to live.”

"I think this little peninsula is quite high, there shouldn't be that much water, right? Can the water in these mountains rise that high?"

"That's hard to say. If it won't be washed away, where did the pebbles on this island come from? It couldn't have been carried up and left there by someone, could it? Actually, if you look at the earthen embankments left by the water flow on both sides, you can tell how high the water level might rise... Building a dugout takes a lot of effort, so we should think things through carefully and be prepared."

Besides, the dug-out pits are close to water and the bottom is prone to dampness, which can easily lead to illness over time, so it's not a good thing.

Also, if you were targeted, would you rather be surrounded on this small peninsula and forced to jump into the water, or stay on the edge of the hillside forest, where you have cover and an escape route?

Upon hearing the last sentence, Peng Yuanchao's expression also turned serious: "That makes sense, let's do it your way... What do you think of that small patch of grassland in the woods right in front of the peninsula?"

Zhou Jingming looked at it and said, "I also think it's a good place!" And that was the end of it.

Simply selecting a few wooden sticks and wedges is something that people from rural areas often do.

Not long after Wu Yang and the others went inside, they chopped down more than ten wooden sticks and then used axes to make simple repairs and wefts at the edge of the forest.

After wedging in two pickaxes and two shovels, Peng Yuanchao went to mark the location for digging the dugout, and four people started digging.

A dugout is a simple form of living in desertified areas.

In the 1950s, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps entered the territory to reclaim land and defend the border. Adhering to the principle of not competing with the people for land or profits, they relied on their own efforts and worked hard to build a large number of farms in the north and south of Tianshan.

Many businesses and new towns were born on the basis of these places.

The dugouts they lived in became a symbol of their arduous pioneering spirit back then.

The method of digging a dugout is relatively simple. You dig a pit about two meters deep, six meters long, and four meters wide. You use thick tree trunks as purlins and thin branches as rafters. Then you lay tree branches or reeds on top, sprinkle a layer of straw, cover it with some loose soil, and then cover it with a thick layer of mud. Finally, you dig a sloping path from the edge of the pit to the ground to serve as a passage for entering and exiting. That completes the task.

However, the dugouts needed by the gold-mining teams were only temporary dwellings for about six months, and did not require doors, mud plastering, or rammed earth walls like long-term housing.

In this day and age, only herders would probably do things like this.

Herdsmen migrate from place to place, traversing thousands of miles between north and south, moving their livestock and settling wherever there is water.

The winters in Altay are long and cold, with blizzards and fierce winds. In the hot summer pastures, one can live in a yurt, but in the winter, one can only live in a dugout.

This is why you can see many well-built dugouts used every winter on the winter pastures.

A dugout that can accommodate ten people cannot be too small, which means that a considerable amount of earthwork needs to be excavated.

Once the tools were secured with wooden handles, all ten men worked together, some shoveling soil, others digging.

On this riverbank where gold and silver flow, everyone is in high spirits, and they can't help but work hard.

It took three whole days to dig out a pit that was about ten square meters in area and two meters deep. Birch trunks were cut down to make purlins and rafters, and a thick layer of dried reeds cut from the riverbank were laid on top. Then, the plastic sheeting that was brought with it was covered with a layer of mud and straw, and the construction was completed.

Inside the dugout, the earthen platform against the wall was used as a bed.

On the left side near the entrance, a clay stove was built using stones picked up from the beach and mixed with mud for cooking. A slanted hole was carved out as a chimney, and the chimney was heightened with stones and mud on the outside.

A window was left in the middle of the dugout to let in light from outside.

Otherwise, it would be dark inside this dugout even in broad daylight.

With transparent plastic sheeting covering the window frames, there's no need to worry about rain or snow getting in, and you can even open the windows for ventilation when it gets hot.

Because it was located in an underground pit, a hole was specially dug in one corner of the earthen stove to lead to a lower area for drainage, in order to prevent rainwater from entering during the rainy season. Drainage ditches were also dug around the pit in advance.

The dugouts built by Zhou Jingming and his group were considered to be among the more elaborate ones among the gold-mining teams.

Those careless teams often do a very rough job, probably not even as well as the locals who dig a grave.

That's why the group of people who had been sleeping outdoors for three days finally had a place to shelter from the wind and cold.

Lying on the earthen bed covered with thick hay at night, the comfort they felt made all the hard work they had put in over the past few days worthwhile.

That very night, the increasingly gloomy weather finally brought the rain and snow that had been anticipated two days earlier.

(End of this chapter)