In recent years, gold prices have surged relentlessly. Entering October, international gold prices hovered at a high of $3,900 per ounce. As the world is enveloped by unilateralism and uncertainty, gold has once again become the reliable ark amidst the stormy seas. Its soaring value reflects humanity’s quest for security amid turmoil.
Why has gold been revered as currency from ancient city-states to modern nations? And why does it continue safeguarding wealth in today’s modern world? The reasons lie not only in its high density, divisibility, and stable properties, but also in its scarce reserves and arduous extraction—this very scarcity acts as a bulwark against hyperinflation.
China ranks seventh globally in gold reserves, yet its preciousness remains evident relative to its vast territory. So how did ancient people, with limited technology, carve through mountains, refine pure gold, and safeguard this rare splendor?
Beneath all the Song Dynasty’s prosperity lay a crucial foundation: ample currency. This brings us to the unsung hero behind the Song Dynasty’s economic boom—Pan Mei—and the Linglong Gold Mine he personally oversaw.
In popular imagination, Pan Mei is the real-life inspiration for Pan Renmei, a villainous minister in the Generals of the Yang Family. Yet historical truth is often more complex than the stage.
In the fourth year of the Jingde era (1205 AD), Pan Mei arrived at Luoshan Mountain in Zhaoyuan (present-day Zhaoyuan City, Shandong Province). Fresh from a crushing defeat on the northern front, he now carried a mission to redeem his failures through action: the Liao forces in the north loomed menacingly, while years of warfare had drained the imperial treasury. Gold had become the “lifeblood” sustaining the Northern Song Dynasty.
In Zhaoyuan, he witnessed miners still using inefficient, millennia-old sand-washing methods, rampant illegal mining, and bandit-infested wilderness. This had to change.
Thus, a quiet revolution unfolded in these mountains: Pan Mei implemented a system of government-established mining sites overseen by supervisors, with mining rights granted to private operators, merging state will with private initiative. He boldly introduced gunpowder into mining operations, using blasting to fracture rock layers. This innovative break first, sift later technique unlocked the buried gold treasures deep underground. He also established tax supervisors and enforced strict regulations, transforming the chaotic mines into orderly production bases through decisive action.
People from all corners transformed the gold mine, and the mine, in turn, reshaped Zhaoyuan. Shandong artisans, Hebei farmers, Henan merchants, and technicians from various ethnic groups converged like countless streams into this bubbling land.
This gold mine became the veritable “economic ballast” of the Northern Song Dynasty. Historical records estimate that Linglong Gold Mine’s annual output provided nearly one-tenth of the precious metals sustaining the central treasury.
Beyond commercial circulation, gold flowing from these mountains was indispensable—whether for supplying military provisions at the frontiers, aiding disaster-stricken refugees across the land, or regulating the nation’s monetary flow.
During the Han Dynasty, Chao Cuo passionately argued that a wise emperor values grain over gold and jade, yet no emperor ever truly dared to devalue gold. As history’s wheel inevitably shifted from a natural economy toward a commodity-based one, gold’s status became increasingly unshakable.
The late Ming dynasty’s predicament stands as a bloody lesson: the imperial treasury lay bare, with fiscal revenues insufficient even to sustain the silver pay for a single army stationed in Liaodong. The shortage of gold and silver, coupled with economic decline and deflation, acted like an invisible noose that ultimately strangled the dynasty’s lifeline. This demonstrates that the functioning of a nation’s economy ultimately requires solid precious metals as its foundation.
This was the legacy of Pan Mei and the Linglong Gold Mine. The praise and criticism on the theatrical stage were but fleeting smoke and clouds; yet the veins of gold buried deep underground, and the river of currency they spawned, laid a silent yet solid foundation for the economic prosperity of the Northern Song Dynasty.
During the War of Resistance, the people protected the gold from Japanese plunder and supplied it to the Communist Party for the fight.
In 1938, the crackle of Japanese gunfire shattered the tranquility of Zhaoyuan. The invaders’ greedy eyes locked onto the Linglong Gold Mine—they intended to fund their war efforts by exploiting the veins our ancestors had mined.
Bunkers sprouted like poisonous mushrooms atop the hills, barbed wire severing the ancestral lands. Yet the people of Zhaoyuan refused to bow. A silent yet resolute “Battle to Protect the Gold” quietly commenced within the familiar mine shafts and the silent wilderness.
Miner Wang Dechang would forever remember those secret moments under dim miner’s lamps. Using the clanging of chisels as cover, he and his comrades carved hidden compartments into rock walls beyond the Japanese soldiers’ line of sight. They wrapped heavy gold bars in layers of coarse cloth, carefully tucked them into bamboo tubes, and hid them deep within the mine tunnels or in crevices along mountain streams.
Women concealed gold dust deep within their hair buns, calmly passing through Japanese checkpoints despite searches. Returning home, they bent over basins, gently shaking loose their black tresses—where specks of gold glimmered at the bottom.
As night deepened, guerrilla fighters disguised as porters shouldered these “special cargo” still warm from human touch. They navigated barbed wire and sentry posts, delivering this fiery devotion from the depths of Zhaoyuan step by step to distant Yan’an.
This gold-guarding route flowed with blood that knew no boundaries.
Under flickering miner’s lamps, Han Chinese miners—with their intimate knowledge of the tunnels—secretly handed spider-web-like mine maps to the guerrillas; Amidst the ringing of camel bells, Hui merchants leveraged their extensive trade networks to carve out covert routes for gold transit; Through forests and snowfields, Manchu hunters guided convoys through remote mountains using ancestral tracking skills.
This gold was no longer mere treasure—it transformed into steel rifles in soldiers’ hands, becoming the force for national salvation.
In those years, the gold transported from Zhaoyuan shone brightly in the darkest hour— During the War of Resistance, the gold sent to Yan’an funded the purchase of vast quantities of military supplies, propping up half the foundation of the Jiaodong Anti-Japanese Base Area.
By this point, Linglong Gold Mine had long transcended the significance of a mere mining site. It became a spiritual bastion forged in gold—a solemn oath to defend the nation, written in blood by the Chinese people when their homeland lay shattered.
From the Northern Song Dynasty to the War of Resistance, Zhaoyuan Gold Mine once underpinned the prosperity of an empire, and later became the pillar of survival when the nation faced ruin.
Though the world has changed and the seas have turned to fields, the veins of gold buried deep beneath the earth still shimmer silently in the depths of history. They bear witness to the resilience and dignity of the Chinese nation in the face of every storm. Gold and silver may fade, but the spirit forged by a nation in the act of protection will shine forever.
Source: dzh, cgsjournals, newsduan, goldmarket
