Lunan District 路南区

History

The Kaiping Mining Bureau (开平矿务局) built the Tangxu Railway (唐胥铁路) from Tangshan to Xugezhuang (胥各庄) in 1881 to carry its coal. It was the first standard-gauge railway built by the Chinese themselves, and its later extensions to Tianjin, Beijing and Shanhaiguan became part of the Beijing–Shanhaiguan line. The British engineer Claude Kinder designed the line and built China's first steam locomotive, the "Dragon", from old materials. Tangshan's original station, which Chinese Wikipedia calls China's first railway station, later moved to the site of today's Tangshan South Station, where it began operating in 1907.

The 1976 earthquake left ruins that are now a national key cultural relic protection site, listed in 2006: the former library of the Hebei Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (河北矿冶学院), the former Tangshan No. 10 Middle School and the locomotive works. The early industrial remains of the Kailuan Tangshan colliery, including its No. 1 shaft, were listed at the same national level in 2013.

What to see

The Kailuan National Mine Park (开滦国家矿山公园) is built around the working colliery, whose No. 1 shaft headframe still turns. Its Kailuan Museum holds 47 national first-grade relics and displays an 1881 Kaiping Mining Bureau share certificate that Hebei Daily calls the earliest surviving share in China. A lift takes visitors down to a real, formerly abandoned mine roadway about a hundred metres long. Next to the mine, the Kailuan 1878 creative park has a café named after Kinder in the colliery's old machine-repair workshop, a hall of miners' art and a training base where children learn pingju opera (评剧).

The mine park and the Nanhu scenic area together became a national 5A tourist area in February 2024; Nanhu was made from ground that had sunk over a century of Kailuan coal mining. It hosted the 2016 World Horticultural Exposition, the first held on coal-mining subsidence land. Around the lake Lunan's planners list the Jidong Martyrs' Cemetery (冀东烈士陵园), the Anti-Earthquake Memorial Hall (抗震纪念馆) and the Tangshan Earthquake Ruins Park with the Tangshan Earthquake Museum (唐山地震博物馆).

Highlights

• Kailuan National Mine Park 开滦国家矿山公园: Museum with 47 first-grade relics, a real mine roadway and the still-working No. 1 shaft.
• Nanhu scenic area 南湖: Lake park made from mining-subsidence land; host of the 2016 World Horticultural Exposition.
• Tangshan Earthquake Ruins 唐山大地震遗址: National key protected site listed in 2006, including the former mining-college library.
• Kailuan 1878 creative park 开滦1878文化创意园: Old colliery buildings with a Kinder café, a hall of miners' art and a pingju training base for children.