The city where dead dinosaurs dance

Visitors to Heiyoushan — literally Black Oil Hill — can dance and scream to cause bubbles to burble to the surface of pools of oil.

At Bubbling Spring, groups hop and stomp on the ground, causing slick suds to rise and erupt like blisters. At the nearby Screaming Spring, they yell or sing to coax inky froth to the top. Reflection Spring is a black mirror where white clouds cast clear reflections on its glossy surface that fizzes with natural gas, which has been percolating from its guts for 1.6 million years.

Heiyoushan oozes with 117 such springs, over 30 of which are visibly active.

The 13-meter-high knoll covers just 0.2 square kilometers yet has played an outsized role in history.

A dusty oil town on the edge of the Gobi might seem bleak — far from a cultural oasis in geography or spirit. But Karamay surprises visitors with a colorful vitality.

Its name is literally synonymous, meaning "black oil" in the Uygur language. In fact, it's the only city on Earth named after the substance. A saying goes: If oil weren't discovered in Karamay, Karamay wouldn't exist.

While the city was officially founded in isolated wasteland in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in 1958, its true origin story began tens of millions of years earlier. Back then, this vast desert was an expansive lake that flourished with life — until it didn't. Its parched shores became a mass grave — and a geological casket that's now a treasure chest.

Here, the Earth's crust encloses gems beyond black gold. Stratigraphic paleontologist Wei Jingming discovered Wei's Junggar pterosaur (Dsungaripterus weii) while researching biological data in the strata to assess reserves. The relatively complete skeleton wasn't just the first known specimen of its species but also of the family, Dsungaripteridae.

That prehistoric energy fuels the economy of today and the imagination of tomorrow.

It's transforming a once-barren landscape into a vibrant urban area. Prehistoric death is giving new life to future industries like AI, with oil pulled from the ground powering the likes of the Karamay Cloud Computing Industrial Park, proving that the most valuable resource remains innovation.

At Heiyoushan, the earth itself rises as a testament to the forces that elevated this unlikely city. Here, the past doesn't stay buried — it insistently churns to the surface.

Perhaps the best embodiment of how black gold has alchemized into cultural prosperity is a set of massive metal sculptures that look like petroleum bubbles shimmering over the No 1 Well, so named because it was the first well in New China's first major oilfield.

This gusher changed the nation's destiny. In 1955, after lying dormant for eons, it erupted from beneath these remote badlands to catapult the country's energy sector into the future.

Oil was detected in the region in the fourth century, when the Northern Wei-era (386-534) Book of Wei: Records of the Western Regions described oil "flowing across dozens of li", one li being an ancient measurement of distance of about 500 meters.

Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) records call Heiyoushan "Qingshi Xia" (Green-Stone Gorge) because of how the seepage stained its sandstone slopes.

It still does.

You don't need to be a geologist to know oil is there. It's plain to see — and smell.

The question was: How much?

It turns out — far more than anyone would have guessed.

Chinese and former Soviet Union scientists began surveys and drilled shallow wells in the 1950s, when the country's annual crude output totaled 435,000 metric tons, barely a third of domestic demand.

On June 14, 1955, the 1219 Youth Drilling Team arrived, set up camp and vowed to "settle down, put down roots, and never give up until oil flows".

And 137 days later, it did, when they punctured the pressurized pocket at the No 1 Well.

Workers flowed into the land as oil spurted forth from it.

They confronted one of Earth's most extreme climates. They were scorched by 50 C summers that broiled the air, chilled by — 40 C winters that froze the ground and thrashed by hurricane-force winds powerful enough to shave stone.

Karamay is home to otherworldly yardang landforms that have been sculpted by ferocious wind erosion at a place called Ghost City, named because the ancients believed the shrieking gales were demons' screams.

The oil workers took refuge in cabin dugouts.

Life's most vital requisite, water, had to be hauled in from far away by camel. Rainfall here reaches only 130 millimeters, but evaporation rates exceed 3,500 mm. So, even if you bring in water from afar, the thirsty air swiftly steals it with greedy gulps.

In 1958, composer Lyu Yuan wrote the lyrics to The Song of Karamay: "No grass grows, no water flows, and not even birds fly."

In the 1980s, poet Ai Qing wrote:"The starkest landscapes conceal the fiercest power; the deepest veins spill the most precious wealth; the quietest fighters shelter the stoutest hearts. Oh, Karamay, you are the desert's own beauty."

Residents stage an annual festival on Aug 8 — a date chosen for its auspicious double-eight (8/8) in Chinese culture — with parades and floats commemorating the moment water from the distant glacier-capped Altay Mountains first poured into the city in 2000, ending years of desperate drought. This celebration is tempered by the memory of sacrifice — 20 of the 30,000 workers who forged this lifeline died during the three-year water diversion project.

Despite these hardships, for seven decades, the heart of the Karamay oilfield has beaten steadily beneath the Junggar Basin's breast, pumping a vital lifeblood through the nation. Over 450 million tons of crude and more than 110 billion cubic meters of natural gas have flowed from its veins to lands far beyond the Gobi's horizon.

Karamay aimed to channel its legacy into a new ambition — 20 million tons of oil and gas equivalent by 2025. That was not just a target but a promise to the future that extends beyond its terrain today.

Its landscape is populated by the bobbing heads of "nodding donkey" pumps, which resemble a massive flock of metallic chickens perpetually pecking at the gravel.

They increasingly share the skyline with the giant pinwheels of wind turbines that twirl like silver-petaled flowers atop steel stems and long rows of solar panels that stretch across the sallow soil like the sapphire scales of gliding dragons.

Karamay's green coverage has increased from 1 percent in the 1970s to 44 percent in urban areas as of 2023, accounting for 15 square meters per person.

Volunteers have planted 9.5 square kilometers of drought-resistant plants. Abandoned mines have been repurposed as eco-parks. A garbage dump has been transformed into an orchard.

It seems green is the new black in this implausible place that shouldn't be — but is.

Here, you can jump and sing to make dead dinosaurs dance. A history of fossil fuels is forecasting the future of renewables. And energy once unleashed solely from the ground is now also harnessed by the sun and wind.

It's a land where evaporation exceeds rainfall, yet a different kind of oasis springs forth from its surface — a fount of fortitude, ingenuity and hope.

Perhaps the most profound discovery in Karamay wasn't oil, but the indomitable spirit required to build a future on top of it.

That may be the deepest layer of its bedrock — one not made of mineral but of meaning.