Mohe’s modern mining history is associated with Li Jinyong, appointed in 1887 to plan a gold mine for the Qing government. Mohe was remote from provincial centers and faced difficult transport, financing and labor conditions. After surveying the region and preparing regulations, Li secured approval; in October 1888 he arrived with colleagues and nearly a thousand mine workers to establish the operation. The first three gold works opened in February 1889. These dates mark an organized industrial enterprise, rather than the beginning of all local gold gathering.
From the journal
Mohe’s Gold-Mining Past: From a Qing-Era Enterprise to Local Memory
Mohe’s gold history took institutional form in the late nineteenth century, when the Qing government organized a mining enterprise near the Amur. The story includes difficult transport, border politics and the workers who built a remote mining operation.
In the same city · Greater Khingan Range Prefecture ↗A mining venture on the Amur frontier
Roads, supplies and cross-border relations
The mining operation depended on moving food, equipment and people across long distances. The Mohe municipal biography of Li describes a land route of more than 2,000 li toward Mergen, present-day Nenjiang, and river transport along the Amur. The mine also operated in a border environment where Russian officials and miners were nearby, making jurisdiction and resource disputes part of its history. Gold extraction here was therefore tied to infrastructure and diplomacy as much as to geology.