Karamay Museum 克拉玛依博物馆

About Karamay Museum

Karamay Museum (克拉玛依博物馆), officially the Karamay Cultural Heritage and Museum Institute (克拉玛依市文博院) and also signed as Karamay Exhibition Hall (克拉玛依展览馆), stands on Junggar Road (准噶尔路) in Karamay District, Karamay (克拉玛依). It started as a hall on the history of the Karamay oilfield and now covers the city from prehistory to the present.

Work on the Karamay Oilfield Mining History Exhibition Hall (克拉玛依矿史陈列馆) started in 1982, and it opened on the eastern edge of the city in July 1983. The hall covered more than 2,700 m², with galleries arranged by decade, from pioneering in the 1950s to reform in the 1980s, alongside offices and cellar dormitories from the oilfield's first years. It became Karamay Exhibition Hall in 1997, took on the Karamay Museum name in 2009 and has used its present name since 2020. The China Museums Association listed it as a national third-grade museum in 2020, and it became a second-grade museum in August 2024. In May 2024 the Xinjiang Department of Culture and Tourism published it among twelve museums selected as regional feature museums.

The indoor halls, just under 2,750 m², start with a prelude hall showing the score of the "Song of Karamay" (克拉玛依之歌) and a relief of Xinjiang's landforms. An ancient-times hall has an animation of how the oil formed and a reconstructed Dsungaripterus (准噶尔翼龙), a pterosaur. Another hall covers the first oil ventures in Xinjiang from the late Qing to the Republic, with replicas of Xinjiang's first oil well and the first distillation still at Dushanzi (独山子). The pioneering hall follows oil workers from 1949 to 1978, including the drilling of Karamay No. 1 Well (克拉玛依一号井), and two final halls trace the city since the reform era. By 2024 the collection had grown to more than 5,000 items or sets.

The yard holds a BU-40 drilling rig (贝乌40钻机), the type used at Karamay from the 1950s until Daqing 130 rigs had fully replaced it in 1979; its derrick is 42 m tall. The yard also has pumping units, lorries, tractors, a "Pioneer" sculpture and the Heiyoushan cellars (黑油山地窖), a Xinjiang regional protected site, where the first drilling teams lived and worked in the 1950s; they were repaired in place with desks and beds. For the museum's 40th anniversary in 2023, the city's culture and tourism bureau premiered an immersive play, "Years: Night at the Karamay Museum" (岁月·克拉玛依博物馆之夜), in which audiences walk through the galleries while actors recreate oil workers' lives in the 1950s and 1960s.

What to look for

• The BU-40 drilling rig (贝乌40钻机), with a 42 m derrick, used on the Karamay oilfield until 1979
• Heiyoushan cellars (黑油山地窖), 1950s drillers' cellar quarters and a Xinjiang regional protected site
• Replicas of Xinjiang's first oil well and the first distillation still at Dushanzi (独山子)
• Exhibits on the drilling of Karamay No. 1 Well (克拉玛依一号井)
• A reconstructed Dsungaripterus (准噶尔翼龙) pterosaur in the ancient-times hall
• The score of the "Song of Karamay" (克拉玛依之歌) in the prelude hall
• Pumping units, lorries and tractors in the museum yard

Location & getting there

Getting to Karamay Museum

• Search for 克拉玛依博物馆 with 克拉玛依市 and 克拉玛依区.