Some people say that when it comes to gold panning madness, Hunan Longhui gold diggers should be the first. Their footprints are all over the world, where there are gold diggers, there must be Longhui people, and even the Antarctic and the Arctic have their presence. But in fact, the Shanglin people in Guangxi were not convinced by the first one.
In terms of danger, they live every day at the gunpoint of Ghanaians in Africa. In terms of numbers, the "Shanglin Gang" in Guangxi did not come in vain. They know that the most important thing for foreign survival is life, and wealth is only secondary, so they will bring 200 grams of gold every day when they go out, so that when they are robbed, they can catch a life under the gun and come back.
What some people wonder is that if it is so dangerous, why should we go deep into the dangerous situation and live every day licking blood under the muzzle of the gun?
After all, because there is gold everywhere.
How did the "Shanglin Gang" come into being?
Everyone knows that there is an old Chinese saying called "seeking wealth and wealth in danger", and even some people joke that "the road to riches is long, and the way to get rich is in criminal law", which is to say that if you want to get rich, you must first take some risks, and the greater the risk, the greater the return. The people of Shanglin in Guangxi have a deep feeling for this sentence.
Shanglin people believe that the biggest scam today is that hard work is the way to get rich, they risk sudden death every day to work, but they do not necessarily make a few dollars. It's true that hard work can get rich, but it's coming too slowly, and they can't wait that long.
They set their sights on Ghana, Africa, not far away. A country in West Africa known as the "Gold Coast".
Ghana, Africa
According to statistics, in 1994, Ghana's proven gold reserves totaled 31.672 million ounces, and even if it has been mined for more than 500 years, the remaining gold can still be mined for more than 700 years.
The presence of Ghana subverted the Shanglin people's impression of poverty, and some people let go of their doubts and traveled thousands of miles to Africa to seek wealth, and since then, the picture of "ten thousand golden farmers breaking into the Kanto" has begun to play out between China and Africa.
In fact, the Shanglin people of Guangxi are not the first to eat crabs in Ghana, Africa.
The first batch of Chinese who went to Ghana to pan for gold were Heilongjiang people, and then a group of Ghanaian gold diggers appeared in Hunan Province.
Moreover, there are not many Shanglin people in Guangxi who just went to Ghana in Africa to pan for gold, and the real spurt of development is mainly due to a local popular story in 2005.
According to the story, a Shanglin fellow ran to Ghana with a full net worth of 5 million, and in 3 years, his wealth doubled countless times and became a billionaire.
The Shanglin people are panning for gold in Ghana
Some people say that anyone who has been to Ghana, Africa, pans for gold, Nanning villas and Ferrari sports cars can buy at will, some of which are still global limited editions. Sending relatives is sent with piles of gold. I haven't got off the plane yet when I get home, and the luxury car that greets you is already waiting at the airport. There are also people who have a double harvest of love and career, and even married an African wife.
Although the story has an exaggerated element in it, the fact that the Shanglin people went to pan for gold and became rich is not a fake.
It is understood that Shanglin merchants who have been to Ghana to pan for gold have confirmed that in 8 years, their circles have produced 6 to 8 people with a net worth of hundreds of millions.
Seeing that the predecessors in the village have earned a lot of money, how can the people who stay in the village still be idle.
Since then, the Shanglin people from all over the world have begun to "enter and pan for gold" and dream of being rich, quite the momentum of breaking into the Kanto in those years, the team has gradually grown, and the "Shanglin Gang" has gradually formed.
What kind of benefits has the gold panning brought to the Shanglin people?
After arriving in Ghana, they found that the gold in Ghana was mostly true, but the Ghanaians were too stupid, and the technology used was very primitive and backward.
They do not even have the most basic tools for gold panning, and most people can only mine and carry the placer gold with their bare hands, which is not only inefficient, but also wastes a lot of time, cost and manpower. The Shanglin people realized that it was not obvious that God was helping them.
After returning home, the Shanglin people made a unique sand pump and installed it on the beach to mine placer gold, which was more than N times more efficient than before.
Sand pump
At the end of the day, a sand pump can mine about 100 grams of gold. And a placer gold can be placed two sand pumps at the same time, and the income that the Shanglin people can get every day is very considerable, which is much more than they earn by shaving food in the land.
This placer gold needs to be emphasized here.
In fact, the large gold mines in Ghana are mainly based on rock gold, but at that time, the mining of rock gold was mainly controlled by the large mining companies of the capitalist countries, Britain and the United States, and ordinary people only had to look at it.
Rock gold
The reason why this placer gold is not mined is mainly because of the special location of their distribution.
Placer gold is generally mainly concentrated on the beach, and in these places the large machines have no way to set foot, and the capitalist countries have the heart and are powerless, so they have to cut off this part of the gold. This gave the Shanglin people an opportunity to take advantage of it and become a paradise for the Shanglin gold prospectors.
But in any case, this is after all grabbing food on someone else's territory, and in order not to be hindered by the local people from mining gold, the Shanglin people have made an agreement with the local chieftain at the beginning.
The cost of selling the gold collected is paid in part every year, even if it is a tip and a protection fee, so that the locals cannot prevent them from mining gold here.
The placer gold business was able to develop in places such as the Offen River and the Tano River. Ghana has also gradually become popular with the saying, "Where there is gold, there are Shanglin people."
Most of the gold mined by the Shanglin people was sold to merchants, only a small part was retained in their own hands, and then the merchants resold to the international market, forming a complete trading chain between one and the next.
In addition to reselling to merchants, Shanglin people also have invested in their own gold mining production lines in Ghana, with a scale of more than 1,000 pieces, and the cost of a single input is about 3 million, which translates into 3 billion yuan for shanglin merchants to invest in Ghana.
As for the amount of gold mined, if there is more, it can be mined about one kilogram a day, and if it is less, it is about 30 to 50 grams, all of which are calculated, and the day is about 300 grams.
If the international gold price is calculated at 280 yuan per gram, the daily income can reach 100,000 yuan, deducting the cost of one day, and there are still tens of thousands of yuan of income a day. In this way, the annual income of tens of millions is a casual thing.
After that, they sell the gold they dig up to fujianese, Hunan and Zhejiang, and some of them also sell to some buyers in India and the local area.
"Tooth extraction" in Ghana
Behind the huge profiteers, the crisis gradually surfaced.
In Ghana, Africa, there are about 50,000 gold diggers from Shanglin, Guangxi. A few years after the gold rush, some people were rich and returned to their hometowns, but some people unfortunately died in the rain of bullets and bullets, forever buried in a foreign country.
In the final analysis, it is just a sentence, in the jianghu mix, in the end, it is necessary to pay back. As for who will pay it back and how to pay it back, it depends on whether the things in the gold digger's brain are enough.
Illegal miners have always been a headache for the Ghanaian government. After all, no country wants outsiders to grab food on their own land. As a result, Ghanaian staff have been looking for ways to get illegal miners out of the area.
Helpless, there are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom.
And this response is to be implemented in response to The loopholes in Ghana's laws. Ghanaian law stipulates that the land and the man-made buildings above ground are managed by local tribes, while the underground mineral deposits are owned by the state, and stipulate that small mineral deposits under 25 acres may not be sold to foreigners.
Therefore, if the Shanglin people want to pan for gold in Ghana safely and steadily, they must have a good relationship with the local government and the tribe.
Generally speaking, they had to negotiate with the government and local tribal chiefs before panning for gold.
They would first sign a contract with the chief, in which most of the Shanglin people would give the chief the condition of "taking 10 to 20% of the amount of mineral mined.".
After the two sides negotiate a reasonable price, the chief of the tribe will turn a blind eye to "release", and the Shanglin people only need to declare themselves as migrant workers. Others in the tribe will also acquiesce in this situation.
Once, a group of new Domestic Shanglin people did not know this jianghu rule. When they arrived in Ghana, they did not report to the Ghanaians in advance, and without saying a word, they demolished some buildings on the ground, and the leader of the tribe was extremely angry when he found out, threatening to arrest them and kill the gods.
After that, under the financial regulation of a group of old Shanglin people, this group of talents was able to escape from danger. Since then, all the new Shanglin people in China must first ask their predecessors for advice before they dare to act in Ghana.
But fortunately, these are all open guns, and the Ghanaian government wants to punish them all in the open, and the most feared thing is that the dark arrows are difficult to defend. The biggest threat to the Shanglin people in Ghana is actually bandits.
Ghana is a country that does not allow guns, and the local robbers naturally do not let go of this loophole, they are basically well-equipped and well-stocked. The Shanglin people who panned for gold in Ghana were nothing more than a piece of exquisite fat meat to them.
According to Li Zengquan, a gold miner, in 2011 alone, they were robbed twice at a gold mining site in Kumasi, and they blatantly robbed them in broad daylight. Such robberies occur from time to time.
These people come to the gold mining site in droves every time. There is no royal law, no rules, only for money. If the gold diggers do not cooperate with them, then naturally they will not skimp on the ammunition in their hands.
Of course, the Shanglin people also tried to resist, but helplessly, whether in terms of armed strength or numbers, the Shanglin people were inferior. After a fierce battle between the two sides, the Shanglin people were seriously injured.
In March 2013, there was a fierce battle between the two sides. Two 20-year-old nephews of a Shanglin mine owner were shot dead on the spot by the robbers, and another Shanglin was shot 27 times and killed on the spot. For a time, the Shanglin Gang was seriously injured.
After a few rounds, the Shanglin people realized that they had to "know the time to be Junjie", after all, the low earth is the sea, and the low man can be the king.
As Hu Hongshi, a gold miner in Shanglin, said: "The most important thing for the survival of a foreign country is fate, and wealth is only the second." In the face of great wealth, the loss of a little money at the moment is nothing. “
Since then, in order to pan for gold and save their lives, every time they go to collect gold, they will have 200 grams of gold on their bodies, so that when the robbers come again, they can buy a way to live for themselves.
The robbers saw that these Chinese were so interesting that they could still make a profit from them, and the two sides gradually reached a reconciliation.
To die in life, to survive in death
In addition, they generally live together in Ghana, and most of them are relatives or friends, so that it is convenient for them to take care of each other. In terms of specific activities, they are mainly concentrated in the cities of Kumasi, Oguasi and Dawa in Ghana.
When selling gold, they will not only gather together, but also hire some local bodyguards to escort them, and the more Lin Gold Prospectors will also have a few AK47s in their hands. Statistically, a complete team is estimated to have tens of thousands of guns in its hands.
In addition to facing the threat of the Ghanaian government and bandits, the Shanglin people also have to deal with the natural crisis in this part of Ghana at any time.
AK47
Ghana's hot climate provides room for the development of many diseases, and malaria is one of them. In some countries with developed medical conditions, malaria is not terrible, but in the Mining Area of Ghana, the medical conditions are poor, and there are many tropical infectious diseases in this area.
Gold diggers are originally doing hard work with huge physical exertion, there is no meal, the accommodation environment is poor, and the natural immunity is relatively low. In this case, it is easy to be invaded by germs. Once invaded, there is no timely treatment, and death is a matter of minutes. It is also true that many Shanglin people died of illness in a foreign country because of untimely treatment.
According to statistics, between 2005 and 2013, more than 300 Shanglin people died of malaria, including many billionaires. In addition, Shanglin people also face the risk of expiring their visas.
Most of the Shanglin people who went to Ghana to pan for gold only got tourist visas, and only a small number of them got work visas. In other words, most of these people are illegal migrant workers. This gave the Ghanaian government a blatant reason to expel them.
At one point in May 2013, the evictions reached a climax. At that time, Ghana launched a political struggle in the name of the president to "clean up illegal gold mining". A total of 169 illegal Chinese immigrants were arrested by the Ghanaian police on suspicion of illegal finance. As for the end of these people, no one knows.
Even so, there are still many Shanglin people who have gone to Ghana one after another to survive and die in this land where wealth and crisis coexist.
Chinese gold diggers arrested
Money, a topic that no one can avoid. Money is important, but whether money is important or fate is important, in different people, there must be different answers. But in the end, everything is inseparable from its origin, life is one, and then it is all zero, and there is no use for not having so many zeros.
Instead of "licking the blood" on the muzzle of the gun every day and risking his life to fight for a wealth that he does not know whether he has a life to enjoy, it is better to do a good job every day's work safely and steadily, after all, fine water can flow long, and the next day can be long.