The National Mine Park in northeast China's Fuxin City, converted from Asia's largest open pit coal mine, opened to tourists on Monday.

Admission to the park is free. Covering an area of 28 square kilometers, the park contains a cultural square, a museum, a viewing platform and other attractions. Its construction started in 2007.

The cultural square exhibits the tools commonly used in blasting, picking and transportation in mining: electric picks, down-hole drills, steam and electric locomotives and bulldozers.

The museum exhibits items about the origin of the earth and life, mining as it relates to people's lives; resources and environmental protection, rock and mining appreciation, industrial heritage and tourism development.

Fuxin, in China's northeast Liaoning Province, which relied mainly on mining in the past, is the first pilot city identified by the State Council to transform its economy.

Li Mingshan, vice mayor of Fuxin, said the government has invested 400 million yuan (58.55 million U.S. dollars) in infrastructure and prevention of geological disasters.

He said the park also displayed an electric locomotive produced by the Czech Republic during World War II, a Japanese steam locomotive, the first electric pickaxe that China imported from Soviet Union, as well as the first and the last China-made steam locomotives among its total of 186 steam and electric locomotives.

The items not only witness the history of the world's industrial development from the late 19th century to the 20th century, but also China's modern industrial development, Li said.

As one of the 156 major industrial projects that pushed the first industrialization steps of then newly established People's Republic of China, the Haizhou Open Pit Coal Mine began operation in 1953.

It boasted the then most advanced coal mining techniques brought from the former Soviet Union. Its heyday could be seen on the five-yuan note of the third set of RMB issued in 1962, which depicts a huge electric picker operating in the mine.

But that electric picker is silent now.

The mine, which produced a total of 243 million tonnes of coal, was mined out and went bankrupt in July 2005, leaving a pit of 2.8 billion cubic meters three kilometers from downtown Fuxin city.

The park, at minus 175 meters, is 20 meters lower than the lowest natural land point in China,

Aydingkol Lake in the Turpan Basin in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

"Tourists can have a journey to the center of the earth here," said Li.

Stepping down the stone stairs, people can see coal mine veins formed in the Cretaceous period, animal and plant fossils, and agates in their original forms.

Li said in the future, tourists would be able to experience the miners' lives, working as an electric picker, riding a mining train, and even drilling and blasting coal walls with safety explosives.

Source: Xinhua