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Previous: Beijing A
After a day's icebreaking and sightseeing in Beijing, we flew to Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, where we were warmly welcomed by the Provincial Revolutionary Committee.
We were given special treatment as fellow citizens of their hero Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who courageously provided his medical services during the long march with Mao. Almost all the Chinese we met reverently mentioned Bethune. It was embarrassing because the delegation members knew little more about him than what had been mentioned in our briefings.
We stayed in this government guest house where our hosts greeted us with our second state banquet.
Chinese state banquets were impressive affairs. An equal number of Chinese shared large round tables with us for these gastronomic events lasting from eight to midnight. Our table mates would fill our plates with the finest titbits from the rotating table centre and frequently propose toasts of the fiery Chinese speciality Mao Tai (60% alcohol).
We were subjected to eight such banquets in three weeks... enough excesses to last a year!
Somehow we managed to get up early to spend the following day visiting the giant Daqing oil field about which very little was known outside China at that time. We were the first westerners to visit it.
Even its exact location, two hours by train from Harbin, was not known.
Flat Heilongjiang is wheat country like Canada's western plains.
The people were however regrouped by work brigades in small communities of much lower living standard instead of being isolated in widely dispersed, comfortable homesteads in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.
The popular image of Chinese food always includes rice because the overwhelming majority of Chinese immigrants world-wide came from the overcrowded southern provinces where three crops of rice can often be grown each year.
In the north, wheat and not rice is grown and noodles are the staple food.
Petroleum exploration, begun with soviet assistance in the '50s, was continued successfully by the Chinese who discovered the first field shortly after the Russian's departure in 1959.
Crews working the very extensive Daqing oil field were dispersed in small communities rather than concentrated in one great oil boom city like they would have been in the west.
The Chinese were very secretive about their giant discovery partly to avoid arousing Russian interest (Blagoveshchensk on the Amur is only 400 km from Daqing).
We were welcomed and shown around by the local "Revolutionary Committee". Here as everywhere else, the motto in 1973 was "Develop the initiative and maintain the independence.
The field was all ready known to be a giant with more than 1000 producing wells when we visited it in 1973.
Strategic decentralisation was the order of the day to ensure the maintenance of local economic activity in case parts of the country were invaded.
In accordance with this strategy, pipe fittings, nuts and bolts and many needed supplies were produced locally by small less than optimum shops like this one to avoid dependence on the outside.
Collective enthusiasm was maintained at a high level by the constant promotion of worker heroes as role models
Daqing's hero worker Wang Jinxi became known all over China as the "Iron Man" for working long hours at -30 Celsius until drilling rig struck oil in 1960. Mao referred to him in his motto "In industry, learn from Daqing"
The whole crew of the rig turned out to ceremonially welcome us when we arrived to visit their operation.
We were shown everything on the surface but did not learn much on the number and depth of the producing horizons.
The set up and mud pits were fairly standard for a heavy rig like this one.
So was the drill floor and their drilling procedures.
We were however surprised to see that all this equipment was powered by electric motors instead of the diesel engines that are used everywhere else.
The mud pumps were also driven by electric motors.
This difference led to all kinds of speculations on the scarcity of diesel fuel relative to the availability of electricity in oil poor but coal rich China...
And here is a ceremonial picture of some of our group with the crew.
Many clues indicated that the Chinese leaders took very seriously the threat of a possible Soviet invasion. Wellheads and pumping stations were protected in underground bunkers like this one and all gathering lines were deeply buried in the Daqing field.
Chinese preparedness for war was also visible in Beijing where an extensive network of underground shelters had been built. We were later allowed to visit a small part of this underground city.
From Daqing, we flew to Tientsin to visit the Takong field (that was not as carefully protected), and then to Shanghai.
