SHANDONG Province announced on Saturday that its mining resource explorers found a mega-sized gold mine with 51.83 tons of gold reserves, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.

The gold is estimated to be worth nearly eight billion yuan (US$106 million), the report said.

The explorers spent two and a half years seeking the gold, which is in Laizhou City, the report said.

East Jiaozhou Bay in northern China is the country's biggest gold resource base, containing 3,400 tons of gold reserves, the report said. The provincial mining bureau has discovered more than 100 gold mines with 1,000 tons of gold reserves detected.