Drawing from ca dao vùng mỏ (the lesser-known writings of anonymous Vietnamese miners), the vibrant Vietnamese print press of the 1930s, and other archival sources, this chapter offers insights into the internal workings of large-scale coal mining enterprises, which were founded on racial, professional, and gendered power structures. In addition, this chapter describes the formation of a strong oppositional and distinctive Vietnamese miner subculture, forged both within and beyond the mines. Outside the mines, far from company surveillance, miners engaged in collective acts, such as theft, fraud, and illicit recreational activities, such as opium smoking, gambling, and smuggling, to supplement their wage income or to simply decompress after a hard day at work in the company of their workmates. The relative autonomy and strength of this miner subculture reveal the failure of the internal working regime of coal mining companies to impose uniform working patterns on their employees. Instead, workers banded together and utilized their networks and autonomous culture to contest and exploit the limitations in French labor management for their own personal gains.