This Day, That Year

Item from Dec 29, 1983, in China Daily: Working at pump station No 9 in the Karamay Oilfield, some 3,000 kilometers to the west of Beijing in the border region of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, is this model working team consisting of five ethnic groups - Uygur, Han, Hui, Mongolian and Kazak. The oilfield, located on the edge of the Gobi Desert, has taken on a new face in the past four years as blocks of new houses spring up one after another in this "boom town".

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the discovery of Karamay's oilfields in the northern part of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Karamay refers to "black oil" in the Uygur language.