Former mines are being turned into public gardens and tourist attractions as China looks to a post-coal future, but the transition has not been smooth
Red koi fish dart between lily pads and lotuses. Strangler figs and mango trees stretch towards a delicately latticed roof. Few would guess that underneath this beautiful botanical garden in Taiyuan, capital of northern China’s Shanxi province, lies an abandoned coal mine.
“[This area] was all black,” Ding Yiju tells TWOC. As the lead coordinator for the Taiyuan Botanical Garden project, he recalls the early stages of construction in 2015. “We even took a block of coal back to Austria, to show our team in Europe.”
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