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A group photograph hangs on a damaged wall at Wang Junqi's cave house in an area where land is sinking next to a coal mine, in Helin village of Xiaoyi, Shanxi province, August 2, 2016. Deep in the coal heartlands of northern Shanxi province, people in Helin village are fighting a losing battle as the ground beneath them crumbles: patching up cracks, rebuilding walls and filling in sinkholes caused by decades of coal mining. Around 100 mines in Helin – buried in the hilly rural outskirts of the city of Xiaoyi – have been exhausted, and cluttered hamlets totter precariously on the brittle slopes of mining pits. But while local authorities have begun evacuating hundreds of thousands of residents most at risk elsewhere in Shanxi province, Helin's situation – though serious – isn's yet considered a priority. Mines that burrowed under villages and towns during China's three-decade coal boom have left the authorities with the need to evacuate hundreds of communities in danger of sinking. (Photo by Jason Lee/Reuters)
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