Yumen Oilfield Industrial Heritage 玉门油田工业遗产

About Yumen Oilfield Industrial Heritage

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission's page, credited to China National Petroleum Corporation, gives the well's history. It says Lao Yi Jing, well No. 1 of the Laojunmiao oilfield, is the discovery well of the Yumen oilfield and that its production opened the field's development and, in the page's words, opened the first page of China's modern petroleum industry. On 26 December 1938, it says, three pioneers of China's oil industry, Yan Shuang, Sun Jianchu and Jin Xigeng, reached the bank of the Shiyou river at the north-western end of the Hexi Corridor and camped at the Laojunmiao temple beside the river at an elevation of 2,400 metres, beginning early geological survey and prospecting work in temperatures below minus 20 degrees Celsius. Forty-seven days later, on 23 March 1939, the first well, sited by Sun Jianchu, was dug by hand, and on the 27th, at 23 metres, it produced more than a tonne of oil. The wooden cable-tool rig brought from Yanchang, the page says, was Yumen's first-generation rig with a drilling capacity of 200 metres; on 6 May the well was switched to that rig, and on 11 August, at 115.51 metres, it struck the K layer and produced about 10 tonnes of crude a day, opening the Laojunmiao oilfield's development. From this well the field drilled more than ten further wells with wooden cable-tool rigs and by 1945 had produced 250,000 tonnes of crude, shipped out across the country. In 1987 the Yumen oilfield put up a stele at the well as a permanent record, and the page says the well is now a patriotism education base and a national industrial heritage site.

The Laojunmiao temple itself is described on the Yumen municipal government's page. It says the temple and the first well stand at the southern end of the Yumen urban area and that the temple was first built in the second year of the Tongzhi reign of the Qing; the page says the place became known nationally, and internationally during the Second World War, because China's then largest oilfield was found and developed there during the war against Japan. In 1980, it records, the Yumen petroleum administration rebuilt the temple to mark the discovery and development of the oilfield and installed a pumping unit at the spot in front of it where the oilfield's first well had been drilled, inscribing it with the name Lao Yi Jing. The same page says the temple and the well are now managed by the oil production plant of the Yumen oilfield branch company.

The wider group of sites is described by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's page, which credits the Gansu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism. It places the Yumen oilfield red tourism scenic area in the old Yumen urban area of Jiuquan and records that it is a national 4A-level tourist attraction, a national industrial tourism demonstration base and a classic national red tourism site. This page says the oilfield's development began in 1935 and that the first oil well produced industrial oil flow on 11 August 1939, making it then China's largest and only oilfield; the commission's page instead starts the account with the survey work of December 1938, and both are reported here as the two pages give them, the two agreeing on the date of the first industrial oil flow. The scenic area, the ministry page says, contains the mining area's natural scenery and working oil-production scenes, cave dwellings that gold prospectors and oil workers lived in, the Laojunmiao temple first built in the Tongzhi reign of the Qing, the field's first drilled well Lao Yi Jing, sites associated with the 'Iron Man' Wang Jinxi's drilling team including the first whole-rig move, the first drilling-footage record and a site where men hauled wire rope to repair wells, the oil city park with Sun Jianchu's memorial stele and Wang Jinxi's bronze statue, the Wang Jinxi memorial hall, the Wang Jinxi cadre academy and the 693 civil-defence education base, as well as a refinery, a hydroelectric plant and a machinery plant. It records that at a 2024 industrial tourism promotion event the Yumen oilfield red tourism scenic area was one of ten sites recommended as industrial tourism innovation stars.

None of the three sources gives opening hours, ticket prices, booking arrangements or the location of any individual site within the old urban area, so the catalogue's caution to check booking, site location and temporary closure notices stands; the municipal page's statement that the temple and the well are managed by the oilfield's oil production plant means the visiting arrangements for the two central sites are the operator's rather than a municipal park's. The commission's page is a state-enterprise heritage feature and the ministry page a promotional news item about an award, so their framing language and superlatives are not adopted, and the ministry page's ten-site list is a listing rather than a ranking. No designation list was consulted in this round, and the record's own name, 玉门油田工业遗产, is the catalogue's; the sources name the same sites as the Yumen oilfield red tourism scenic area or as the Lao Yi Jing site.

What to look for

• Lao Yi Jing, the oilfield's first well, where the commission's page records a stele put up in 1987
• The Laojunmiao temple, which the municipal page says was rebuilt in 1980 with a pumping unit installed where the first well was drilled
• The oil city park, which the ministry page says holds Sun Jianchu's memorial stele and Wang Jinxi's bronze statue
• The Wang Jinxi memorial hall and the Wang Jinxi cadre academy, both listed among the scenic area's contents
• The cave dwellings that gold prospectors and oil workers lived in, and the 693 civil-defence education base

Location & getting there

Getting to Yumen Oilfield Industrial Heritage

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