Not all the migration in the P. R. China is towards urban areas. The country is highly dependent on coal to support its growing energy demands and dozens of new mines open each week attracting labour from the countryside both locally and not. Working and living conditions in the mines are atrocious and extremely dangerous (more then 10000 miners die in accidents every year), further more the miners are only employed when needed. These coalminers playing Chinese chess in their living quarters in a privately owned coalmine in Northern Ningxia Province have to share beds between shifts.