Covered with black soot from his wool cap to his thick boots, Chang personifies the stubborn traditions of a region most Chinese refer to simply as Dongbei, which means Northeast. Chang's father was one of several million laborers who moved to northern Manchuria four decades ago to fulfill Chairman Mao's vision of turning China into a socialist industrial giant. Some of those workers ended up in the region's iron and steel mills. Others went to the oil fields of Daqing, a one-industry town where the iconic "Iron Man" toiled. Chang's father landed in these rolling hills near the Russian border, a key zone in a country where coal is still king: China is the world's largest producer and consumer, with 80 percent of its soaring electricity demand fueled by coal-powered plants.

Not much has changed for Qitaihe miners in 30 years—except the world around them. The privatization of some local mines, along with alleged government corruption, has spawned a prosperous new class that exists side by side with the old. Modern high-rises tower over huts in Xinjian Coal Miners' Village; sleek black Audi sedans zoom past miners straining to haul wooden carts up a hill. The wealth has not trickled down to Chang and his family. In the shadow of a coal mountain, he and his wife, Yuan Chenglian, subsist on a diet of cabbage, potatoes, and corn gruel, splurging on meat only twice a year. One of the few decorations in their spartan home is a wedding photo showing a well-scrubbed couple in rental finery—he in a black tux, she in a long white gown carrying a dainty parasol. Yuan looks at her grimy clothes and laughs apologetically. "These photographers," she says, "can make anybody look beautiful."

An explosion at a nearby mine where Chang's father works killed 172 miners last November, pushing the Chinese coal industry's death toll for 2005 to 5,986—suffering nearly as many fatalities per day (16) as the U.S. did the entire year (22). Fearing a backlash among Qitaihe workers, Beijing gave all local miners an 11 percent pay raise. Chang is convinced that conditions will get even more dangerous as dwindling coal reserves drive mines ever deeper. But he is happy to take the extra cash, for he knows that, like his father, he will probably never escape the mines—or the dark mountains that loom, beautiful and menacing, above his home.

The demolition crews will not be stopped. Today, they are bearing down on one of the last stubborn remnants of China's socialist past—a crumbling five-story apartment block known as Building 8-1. For more than half a century, the Tiexi Industrial District in the city of Shenyang—460 miles southwest of Qitaihe—served as China's first "model workers' village," home to dozens of factories and more than a million workers. One by one, the smokestacks and settlements that once breathed life into the district are coming down. Building 8-1, however, still stands forlornly in a field of rubble. Its brick hulk seems deserted until night falls, when a dim yellow glow emanates from the only intact window on the ground floor. Inside, a laid-off factory worker and his wife huddle with their two children around an electric heating coil. They are some of the last holdouts against the march of history.