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.
