Coal miner Zhou Xuetao didn't return to his Qiyang home in Hunan Province for Spring Festival. Instead, like many of his fellow workers, he chose to stay back at Dongqu mine in Shanxi.

Till a month before Spring Festival, Zhou was all set to travel back home with his wife and their 21-year-old son to make the most of his one-week leave. But then the 45-year-old didn't know heavy snow would cause power outages in eastern, central and southern parts of the country and make traveling a hazard.

Nor did he know that President Hu Jintao would urge workers to extract more coal to help meet the heightened demand of power plants.

And once Dongqu colliery decided to increase its production, he found himself heeding to Hu's call and working hundreds of meters below the ground even two days before the Lunar New Year.

"My mother told me over the phone that they were fine. But I know she said so because she didn't want me to worry," Zhou says. What his mother couldn't do, however, is filter the news that kept flowing to him.

He learned that back in his home village, his mother and other family members were living without electricity for two weeks, and half of the village's old brick houses had collapsed under the snow.

The worst winter weather in five decades threw life out of gear in 19 provinces, municipalities and regions before Spring Festival, with Hunan, Guizhou, Anhui, Jiangxi and Guangdong being the worst hit.

But despite having to work when he should have been traveling back home and missing that all-important family reunion, Zhou has no complaints. In fact, he says his mother is happy, too, that he stayed back to help the country overcome the odds at a difficult time.

Among the others who stayed back was Tang Wujia, Party secretary of Dongqu colliery's second mine. "The least we can do for the country is produce more coal," says the 52-year-old, who is also a Hunan native.

The State-owned Dongqu colliery, with 4-million-ton annual capacity, is west of Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi. It supplies coal to power plants in Shanxi, Jiangsu, Hunan and Hebei provinces.

"We are excavating 5,000 tons of coal everyday to meet the demand," says Liu Huaiya, 44, deputy Party chief of Dongqu. Liu is a Yichang resident in Hubei Province.

Liu is the only son of his parents. And even though his 86-year-old father died of brain apoplexy in January, he chose to stay back at Dongqu with the other 4,700 miners.

"I have to stay here at this time of need when half the country is suffering from power outages."

From Dongqu colliery to Shanxi Coking Coal Group Co Ltd, where Liu Jianzhong has been busy answering calls from managers of power plants all over the country. Since he is a sales manager, his office phone and cell phone have kept ringing over the past few weeks. But that's hardly surprising because the company is the biggest coking coal supplier in the country.

The snowy weather has made the company adjust its supply pattern. Liu Jianzhong says only 30 percent of the company's coal usually goes to power plants. About 70 percent of the 50 million tons of its annual production goes to the domestic steel industry or is exported.

But that proportion has been reversed since late January, he says. Now 70 percent of its output is going to Qinhuangdao port, from where it is being transported to power plants in the snow-affected provinces.

"The profit from coking coal is five times that from coal produced to generate electricity. So a reverse in the supply process means a huge loss. But in these times, we know what our responsibility is," Liu says.

Despite that, the firm, which employs 150,000 people and has 12 mining districts in Shanxi, is working full steam to produce as much coal as possible.

"When I watch TV and see millions of migrant workers are stranded at railway stations because power supply has been snapped, I realize why the government is calling for restoring transport, power supply and people's livelihood," he says.

(China Daily February 12, 2008)