A city born of oil, Karamay!

Karamay means "black oil" in Uighur.

This is a city born of oil. When I was studying geography in junior high school, when I recited the oil-producing cities of the motherland, there was such a city in Xinjiang with a slightly awkward name, Karamay! Thanks to myself at that time, remembering such a distant and special city! In 2021, fly with your heart in your hand, and see such a familiar name on the route, and wonder what kind of city it is! So, across the whole of China, flew to Karamay.

Karamay Airport

Arrived in Karamay on the afternoon of March 27th, the airport is not big, the weather is very good, blue sky and white clouds, and Karamay is written on the tower, and the big red letter is particularly eye-catching. After getting off the plane, I walked quickly to the arrival hall to pick up the suitcase, but I was curious why someone started dragging the suitcase. At first glance, it turned out that the two cars of luggage had already been pulled and put on the aisle. Everyone went to pick it up. Efficiency saves trouble. In March 21, when leaving the airport, the nucleic acid test must be effective within 14 days. Fortunately, the test on the 19th is still effective, otherwise the on-site test may have to wait.

Karamay was originally a desert, but it was built as a city because of oil resources, which is really emotional. What is this history like? How the ancestors of that era opened up wasteland and built cities here makes people curious and yearning. There are museums in the city, so it is the most important attraction of this trip.

Take the airport bus and transfer to the bus to Karamay Museum. The airport bus is actually free. This is the first time I have encountered it. Karamay is really a magical airport.

On the airport bus and bus, I kept taking out satellite maps to see the layout of the city. It is really a vast land with few people. The planning of large areas of land is square, unlike the hills in the southeast, which are scattered. . Looking out of the car window, it feels like the vastness of the earth.

The Past and Present of Oil City

I have to praise the staff here, the service attitude is really great. As soon as I entered the museum, I greeted me warmly, took my body temperature, and told me that backpacks are not allowed to enter the museum. There is a concierge, so you can rest assured that there is monitoring. It is just what I want. It is tiring to think about the entire exhibition hall with such a large bag!

Entering the exhibition hall, what you see head-on is a huge copper relief, which is the most vivid portrayal of Karamay oil workers. This city came because of them.

Start the visit, here is the introduction of the use of oil in daily life, the origin of oil, here I would like to praise Shen Kuo, who first proposed the word oil and has been used to this day.

At the beginning of the 20th century, although good oil was discovered here and the first oil well in Xinjiang was dug, it was basically at a standstill. In the 1950s, the ancestors began to gradually develop oil fields, as the promotional film said, the memory of black oil, the era of passion, the simple life, the belief in red, the precipitation of time, and eternal memories.

Everyone regards petroleum as a lifetime career. Well 193 became the first domestic well with a daily output of 100 tons at that time, and was called a hero well! These achievements make the ancestors proud!

With the continuous expansion of oil extraction, more and more ancestors gathered in this wasteland to the west of Jungar Basin! The older generation of oil people from all corners of the country devoted themselves to the great oil industry in the west of the motherland, took root here and built their homes. So, in this desert, Karamay, the only city named after oil in my country, was miraculously born!

When the city was first established, many of them were very simple, a tent was a post office! Some of the living places are cellars! The conditions are difficult, but so what, life will get better and better, and career will get better and better! I can really feel the cheerful spirit of hard work and self-sacrifice of the predecessors.

The history of the city's construction is the history of the youthful blood and sweat of the older generation of petroleum workers! A generation of people, an oil field, a city! Really feel the spirit of the ancestors!

black oil mountain

Come out of the museum and walk to Heiyou Mountain. The road is really wide and the land is very wide. It's hard to walk, it doesn't look big, it's only six or seven hundred meters at every turn. I saw two people flying a kite next to me.

At the entrance of the scenic spot, I saw 1955 and Heiyou Mountain. It just so happens that tickets are free for a while, and you can enter the scenic spot directly by checking the green code.

Really, there is an obvious feeling when entering the scenic spot. If it is not because of oil, it is really a desert that no one cares about! In the desert where the grass hardly grows, I saw oil pools, some of which were built with cement bricks, and some of which were built in a circle with black stones, which looked relatively primitive. The black oil is really black and shiny, and some even bubble! You can only smell the oil smell when you walk in.

The highest point of the scenic spot is this triangular cone-shaped stone tablet, which says Heiyou Mountain. Looking around here, you can see the vast land, and there are many oil pools for walking. This is the hot land that the ancestors of the oil city have dedicated their lives to. Watching the adults take the children to visit the scenic spot, the children laughed and played, which formed a strong contrast with this desert.

The world's largest drop of oil

Transfer to the bus and arrive at No. 1 Well Square. This place is really big, and the most conspicuous thing is this drop of oil, which should be the largest drop of oil in the world. The designer of this sculpture must also be a very loving person, so The city-themed design, such a lovely shiny sculpture, many children like it.

The main body of the sculpture here is this big drop of oil, which is abstracted into a huge oil drop with four round feet leaving space under the middle. There are several groups of small oil droplets around the big oil droplet, some big and some small ones, and the children play among them, which is very lively. The large and small oil droplets are all made of bright mirror surface, which looks a bit like mercury, which is very beautiful.

In the middle of the square, there is another sculpture of pioneers. It can be seen that the city is grateful to commemorate the first batch of pioneers! There is a huge date on the ground in front of the sculpture, which is the day when the pioneers first came here. It has been nearly 70 years since the 1950s, and the older generation of oil workers is already an octogenarian. It is precisely because of the leadership of this generation and the inheritance of later generations that this barren land, which was originally a desert, has become a lively city where buildings are clustered and children are chasing and playing!

Sitting on the top floor of the arc-shaped seat on the northwest side of the square, overlooking the square, I really feel a lot of emotion. Sometimes I think that I am a little bit wrong. I have traveled four to five thousand kilometers from the southeast coast, and I just sit here and watch the adults and children of this city having fun in the square. But isn't this a life experience?

Blue sky and white clouds, buildings, wide squares, oil drops and pioneer sculptures pay tribute to the origin of the city. Adults and children, kite flying, roller skating, walking, leisure and comfortable. And as a bystander, thinking about the history of this city and seeing the current life, I also feel relieved. What's this? This is the same as when you go to Xitang Wuzhen. This is the same as when you go to the ancient city of Pingyao. It is all history and life, but some span thousands of years, and some only span more than half a century, but they are all lifelike.

Nearby is the China University of Petroleum (Karamay Branch). This school and major may become history one day, and this city, when the oil is exhausted or the cost performance of new energy far exceeds that of oil, where will the city go? I think this should be the biggest proposition in this city. There should still be some precedents for resource-exhausted cities in the world. Let’s bless them here!

A person's life is really short, and a person's life is really insignificant. Man, you may have made a choice at a certain point in your life, and then you have lived like this for the rest of your life! I don’t know how the older generation of oil workers feel when they think back on how they left their hometowns to cultivate oil fields in the wild west of the motherland and dedicate their lives to it. People of this generation deserve our respect, including the scientific workers who contributed to your science at that time. Once they do it for a lifetime, decades, it is really great!