Petroleum Geography: Sixty Years of Change in Two Oil Families

On July 14, at the oilfield workers’ residential community, 83-year-old veteran oilfield worker Xiang Linyuan and his family—four generations spanning grandparents, parents, and grandchildren—enjoyed a warm and harmonious gathering.

“All of this is thanks to the Party and to the oilfield—by dedicating myself to the oilfield, I have also reaped its rewards,” the old man said in a quiet but heartfelt voice.

　　Becoming an oil worker was something Xiang Lin had never imagined before he turned 24. His thoughts drifted back more than sixty years.

　　In March 1956, at the age of 20, Xiang Wazi enlisted in the army under Lin Yuan. In March 1960, he and over a thousand engineering troops were transferred en masse to the Daqing Oilfield.

　　This difficulty, that difficulty—above all, the nation’s oil shortage was the greatest challenge. Everything had to start from scratch; everything was about creating miracles!

　　With no housing, no roads, and neither people nor vehicles able to pass through, and equipment unable to be brought in, the most pressing task in oilfield development was building roads. “Back then, we were tunneling; this time, we’re building a highway.” As soon as Xiang Linyuan stepped off the train at Anda, he set to work constructing the main road linking Anda to Daqing.

　　The old man remembers it vividly: back then, conditions were harsh—there was no heavy road‑building machinery. They shoveled earth with iron spades and carried stones in baskets, hauling everything by hand and on their shoulders, just like the “Iron Man” himself…

　　He did whatever the Party asked, and when he did it, he gave it his all. In 1964, he arrived at the North No. 1 Oil Station of Daqing’s First Oil Production Plant, where he worked first at the boiler station and then at the dehydration station. On Sundays, he even joined voluntary labor to level the well pads, and in the evenings he attended meetings to study. Later, Xiang Linyuan became a water‑injection operator at the West No. 1 Water‑Injection Station, and afterward moved to the maintenance team as a pipefitter. He remembers clearly that in the late 1970s, the roads leading to the well pads were still dirt tracks—there wasn’t a single proper paved road. Because of the local terrain, the area around the well sites was riddled with gullies; whenever it rained, water would pool, and the gullies interconnected, making drainage extremely difficult. To ensure production, the mine called on everyone to launch a campaign to dig irrigation channels. Families, young and old alike, pitched in, racing to dig and working with real effort to deliver concrete results. They set out before dawn and didn’t return until they’d finished, often stumbling home in the dark. Today, the drainage ditch along the roadside of Daqing West No. 2 is precisely the legacy of that collective struggle.

　　One’s hometown is always a source of deep longing for those who have wandered far from it. In 1972, Xiang Linyuan and his wife, with their eldest son leading the way and their second and third children cradled in their arms, returned to their ancestral home in Cili County, Hunan, for the first time. After disembarking from the train, they took a boat, then a bullock cart, and finally had to walk a stretch of mountain path. “I knew every little trail back home, yet I still couldn’t find it—our old house had changed beyond recognition.”

　　Forty-three years later, in 2015, Xiangqian accompanied his parents back to their hometown in Hunan. The place had changed so much that it was almost unrecognizable—yet to his father, everything still felt deeply familiar. As the old man often said, “Hunan is my hometown, the place where I was born and raised. Daqing is also my native land; it has given me everything, and it feels just as dear.”

　　Xiang Linyu has two sons and a daughter, all of whom work at the Daqing Oilfield. “I’ve devoted my entire life to one thing: producing as much oil as possible.” After retiring, Xiang Linyu can’t stop thinking about the oil wells; sometimes he stares at them, lost in thought. Indeed, those wells hold the memories of his youth and the sweat he poured into his work.