Daqing

About Daqing

China's most famous oil town rose from empty grassland almost overnight. When drillers struck oil here in September 1959, on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the People's Republic, the find was named Daqing, meaning Great Celebration, and within a few years tens of thousands of workers had built one of the largest oilfields in the world on the plains of western Heilongjiang.

That story is the reason to visit. The memorial to Wang Jinxi, the Iron Man driller who became a national hero, and the preserved early wells and command sites tell the tale of the 1960s campaign, while nodding pumpjacks still dot the city between lakes and wetlands. Daqing is a spread-out, green city of wide avenues, parks and reed-fringed lakes rather than a compact old town.

Summer is pleasant, with wetlands full of birds and hot-spring resorts on the lakes nearby, while winters are long and extremely cold. Harbin is about an hour away by high-speed train, making Daqing an easy add-on to a trip to the north-east.