From the dispassionate eye of a satellite in space, the area around Hpakant, a town in Myanmar's Kachin state, looks like a dry brown moonscape in a sea of green.
The mostly potholed dirt and gravel road to Hpakant twists through emerald hills; in the rainy season, it is reduced to reddish-brown mud, and wooden pontoons load vehicles two or three at a time to swing them across swollen rivers. Around Hpakant itself - a ramshackle organic boom town - over 850 jade mining firms operate over some 9,000ha.
On the ground, the mines are something out of a brutal pre-industrial era. Dump trucks rumble along the tops of high ridges, stick their rumps out and tip their heavy loads of earth and rock tailings from the mines down the slope into deep canyons gouged from the earth. (Courtesy of The Straits Times)
No comments:
Post a Comment