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.