Daqing Oil Field

The Daqing Oil Field stretches across a large area of the Songhua-Liao Plain and is still in active production, though output has declined steadily from its 1970s peak of 50 million tonnes per year. The nodding-pump oil jacks — the familiar silhouette of the petroleum industry — are visible from the road across much of the city's suburban and rural periphery, which gives Daqing its distinctive industrial character even in areas with no other visible industry.

The oilfield is not open to casual visitors, but its outer edges are observable from public roads, and the Iron Man Wang Jinxi Memorial Hall near the main entrance documents the founding mythology of the field with considerable sincerity. Wang Jinxi became the prototype of the model socialist worker, his image reproduced across China for two decades; the memorial hall treats that history with some complexity, acknowledging both the propaganda dimension and the genuine harshness of the early years. Taxi drivers will know where to find it.

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A story
At its 1960s peak, the Daqing oil workers — the "Iron Man" Wang Jinxi and his brigade — worked in temperatures below −30°C with basic equipment, improvising solutions to problems that had no precedent in Chinese petroleum engineering. Wang Jinxi's willingness to jump into wet cement to prevent a blowout became one of the defining images of the Maoist era. His statue still stands at the oilfield entrance.