Two Chinese brothers clawed their way out of a collapsed coal mine after surviving underground for nearly six days, shocking grieving relatives who had burned money for the men’s souls to use in the afterlife, state media said Monday. The China Daily newspaper ran a front-page story about the Meng brothers’ miraculous survival, but official reports made little mention of a mining disaster in Shandong province that left 181 workers trapped in flooded coal shafts and presumed dead .
In that accident, Chinese media has focused on efforts to pump out water: There has been no word on the fate of the miners 10 days after they became trapped when a swollen river breached a dike. Instead, the China Daily played up a report about Meng Xianchen and Meng Xianyou, who surfaced on Friday morning after more than 130 hours trapped in an illegal mine in Beijing’s Fangshan district . [Full Text]
[Image: Rescue workers pile sandbags to firm up a dike where flood waters on Friday breached a levee, flooding two coal mines and trapping 181 miners in Xintai, from AP.]