The 650-year history of alum refining has left over 100 unique industrial heritage sites and cultural accumulations in Funing Mountain of Cangnan County, Zhejiang Province, and has developed into a dazzling "pearl" in the history of Chinese industrial civilization.
Industrial Heritage of Alum Mining in Cangnan County. Photograph provided by the Propaganda Department of the Cangnan County Committee.
Cangnan Funing Town is known as the "World Alum Capital", with a history of mineral civilization spanning over 650 years. Geological actions 130 million years ago formed the unique geological landforms of Funing Mountain, with alum reserves accounting for 60% of the world's known alum reserves.
On the slope of Jilong Mountain in Fudewan Village, the ancient path for carrying alum winds upwards, with ten calcining furnaces towering. The production processes of alum weathering, crystallization, and precipitation are all now part of the display content in Wenzhou's first industrial cultural heritage museum.
At an elevation of 312 meters on the north slope of Jilong Mountain, the Nanyang 312 flat adit is the main mining section of the fourth layer in the Jilong Mountain mining area. It is also the mining adit with the most mining layers, the largest mined-out area in Funing Mountain to date, and is still being mined. Entering the adit and following the main tunnel, the tracks crisscross and roads extend in all directions, with adits within adits and layers upon layers.
"Cangnan's mining and tunneling industry originated from the alum mining at the foot of He Ding Mountain and the silver mining in the upper reaches of the Hangyang Branch River in the Yu Cang Mountain Range", said Zeng Renhai, Deputy Secretary of the Cangnan County Party Committee and County Chief. Over the years, batch after batch of mining talents and entrepreneurs from Cangnan have spread mining projects across the country and to dozens of countries and regions, with an annual output value exceeding 200 billion yuan, accounting for more than 60% of the national mining market share. Cangnan has become the de facto "Hometown of Chinese Mining and Tunneling Industry".
