Black gold streaked red with blood — Dasheng’s Calligraphic Comments on Current Affairs IV

The Other China

玄之又玄

Liu Chan 劉蟾, who also goes by the pen name Dasheng 大生, is a writer, scholar and calligrapher. Born in Shaanxi, he lives in Beijing where he edits The Chinese Study 中國書房. We have frequently featured Liu’s work in The Other China.

China Heritage is grateful to Dasheng for sharing his recent work. Explanatory notes and other relevant material have been added. For previous chapters in this series, see:

Here Liu Chan responds to a deadly coal mine disaster. He mourns the loss of life with traditional solemnity and in the form of a poetic couplet written out in his own calligraphic hand.

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The Chinese rubric of this chapter in The Other China is 玄之又玄 xuán zhī yòu xuán. It is a famous line from the Tao Te Ching. 玄 xuán means ‘deep, profound, dark’.

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
30 May 2026

A descent into the Stygian Mines,
an eternity in the Yellow Springs.
Black gold streaked red with blood,
who really cares about the cost?

Lines composed in response to recurring mining disasters.
Deep sympathy for the precarious labours of the workers.

— Dasheng Liu Chan, 25 May 2026

Note:

On 22 May 2026, a gas explosion at the Liushenyu Coal Mine in Qinyuan county, Shanxi province 山西省沁源縣柳神峪煤礦, killed eighty-two people and injured many more. It was the worst mining disaster in China in a decade. Writing in South China Morning Post on 30 May 2026, Wee Kek Koon observed that:

‘China now leads the world in both producing and consuming coal, its mines a mix of cutting-edge technology and uneven safety records. Perhaps that is what makes the news from Shanxi all the more poignant. Coal has always powered humanity forward, but it has never done so gently. And every so often, it reminds us, with terrible clarity, of the cost.’

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