"他们吃着阳间饭，干着阴间活" —— 一份特殊的劳动礼赞 | Immortalizing China’s coal miners

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Using very little water and thick ink, ancient Chinese painters illustrated the world around them using strong-ink, or dry-ink, painting. Over 5,000 years later, the art form still lives with the help of artist Lin Lanzi.

焦墨画是中国最古老的绘画技法之一，也被称为“枯笔”，指用浓墨、沾很少的水后在纸上的行笔效果。这种画法，在五千年前的陶器上就已经存在了。

The strokes used in strong-ink are thick and rich, giving a rough, hard feeling to the painting. Lin Lanzi chose to employ this technique to portray a group of people near to his heart: coal miners.

焦墨的笔法十分浓郁、醇厚，能在画纸上创造出粗糙、苍劲的风格。林兰子选择用这种笔法来表现一个他个人十分亲近的群体——煤矿工人。

Lin Lanzi’s personal experience left him an intimate connection with coal miners: “I used to be an engineering corps. My job was to blast mountains and dig tunnels, which is very similar to the work of coal miners.” He lived with the miners, had conversations with them, and even went down into the shafts with them. In the dark shafts, miners were all covered in soot, which concealed almost all their features and made it difficult to tell one person from the other. Eventually, soot-covered faces became part of their identity.

林兰子的个人经历，使他对矿工有一种亲近感：“我曾经是一名工程兵，开山凿洞的，和煤矿工人有很多相似之处。”他和矿工一起生活，一起聊天，甚至和他们一起下井。在漆黑的矿井里，矿工们的个人特征几乎全被隐没在煤灰之下。这种外貌成为了标志他们身份的符号。

Lin Lanzi used his brush to truthfully and accurately present the miners’ features. The thick ink that molded the miners’ faces highlighted their white teeth; this speck of white preserved some of their personal features behind their collective identities as miners. By using strong-ink painting, the labor-beaten faces of the miners were depicted much more vividly.

林兰子用画笔忠实地记录了这些特征。厚重笔墨塑造的碳色凸显出矿工们露出的洁白牙齿，使得这一点点白色，成为他们在矿工的身份之下保留的一点点个人特质。焦墨的笔法更显矿工的沧桑。

Working in the shafts can be very dangerous; the lives of miners were constantly threatened by gas explosions and flooding. However, they continue working here, eating only steamed buns for lunch, to create a better life for their children. Lin Lanzi was deeply moved by their simple wish, “they work in the hell of darkness to bring light to others.”

井下的工作非常危险，矿工们时时受到瓦斯爆炸和浸水的威胁。不过，他们依然坚持在这里工作，午饭只是啃几个馒头、包子，只为下一代能过上更好的生活。他们的朴实让林兰子很受触动：“他们吃着阳间饭，干着阴间活，给人们带来了光明。”

Slowly, Lin Lanzi befriended the miners. They became less timid and shy before him, allowing him to capture them at their most relaxed and natural states.

林兰子渐渐与矿工们形成了朋友式的关系，让他们渐渐不再拘谨、羞涩，从而捕捉到他们最自然、本真的状态。

Miners today live different lives from those back then. Aside from better working conditions, there has been a shift in the workers’ age group. Most miners today are young adults who play basketball or enjoy other activities outside of work. These young and lively faces have also appeared in Lin Lanzi’s pieces.

现代矿工的生活，和早期矿工有了很大不同。除了工作条件的改善，这个人群也和从前不一样。他们大部分是年轻人，而且有着丰富的业余生活，比如打篮球等等。这些年轻且充满朝气的面孔，也进入了林兰子的画作。

Lin Lanzi compiled these portraits into an album, The Song of the Coal Miners, published in June 2009 by the People's Fine Arts Publishing House. The media that commented on his album wrote, “For the first time in history, large-scale portraits for coal miners have been created. The painter portrayed these miners like the murals of Dunhuang and religious figures of the Renaissance.”

林兰子将这些画像结集成了画集《煤矿工人之歌》，由人民美术出版社于2009年6月出版。有媒体这么形容这部作品集：“这是有史以来第一次，有人给煤矿工人这么大规模、大尺度地造像，像敦煌壁画、意大利文艺复兴的宗教人物壁画那样为煤矿工人去造像。” 

The solemn, vivid faces of the coal miners created under Lin Lanzi’s strokes represent much more than just that. By using an ancient technique, he documented things that are easily overlooked by others, thus completing a profile on contemporary workers in China.

在林兰子的笔触之下，这些深沉、生动的面孔，不仅仅是一个两个煤矿工人的面孔。他用一份古老的技艺，记录一般人不记录之事，完成了一份对当代中国劳动者的侧写。

Cameraman: Wang Yunfei

Film editing: Zhou Xin, Zhang Haifeng

Story written by: Zhu Siqi

English editor: Matthew Watson, John Goodrich

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