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Home » Feature » Travel

Yumen, birthplace of China oil industry, sees tourism transformation

Source: Xinhua | 00:01 UTC+8 December 6, 2017 | Print Edition

FOR 26-year-old Li Na, there was never any doubt she would return to her home in the northeastern city of Yumen, Gansu Province, to work after studying sculpture in Henan Province for four years.

She has been making handmade painted pottery at a cultural center in the northwestern city since returning two years ago.

“Yumen is famous for its painted-pottery culture,” she says. “I am happy to be a pottery maker in my hometown.”

Yumen is also the site of discovery in 1976 of the Huoshaogou Ruins, the remains of a Bronze Age culture that flourished from about 1900-1500 BC.

Apart from a large number of bronze items, nearly 1,000 painted pottery pieces were also unearthed at the site.

“Unlike other examples in Gansu, Huoshaogou pottery was produced with various colored decorations,” says Wang Pu, curator of Yumen Museum.

In 2006, China listed the Huoshaogou Ruins for national protection.

Li bikes 20 minutes each day to reach the center set up in 2014 by the Yumen Art Gallery.

It is the only place that produces officially recognized handmade painted-pottery in the city.

Making pottery by hand is a very complicated process, Li says.

From picking the clay and modeling to firing and glazing, it often takes days to produce even a small batch.

“Yumen’s pottery is all handmade, unlike many other places where painted pottery is produced by machine,” Li says.

The pottery works have been displayed at a number of art exhibitions, museums and souvenir shops to raise awareness of Yumen’s painted pottery.

However, Li would not have been able to find such a job before 2014, the year Yumen authorities accelerated its transformation from an oil drilling town into a cultural and tourism city.

Yumen was China’s first oil city — beginning in 1939. During the 1940s, its oil accounted for 90 percent of the country’s crude output.

But over the decades, wells tapped out and production hit a record low in 1999. As the oil disappeared, so did the city’s prosperity.

In 2003, locals started leaving for new residential areas or other cities which offered more jobs.

The population dropped below 30,000 from its heyday of about 100,000. House prices were below 500 yuan (US$75) per square meter in 2005.

In Shanghai, the average was 9,300 yuan.

Yumen saw a new opportunity in 2013 when China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative, which is poised to bring changes and create development opportunities for people and countries along the ancient Silk Road trade routes.

Yumen is at the west of the Hexi Corridor, a major part of the Silk Road. It is also only a few hundred kilometers away from Dunhuang, home to the world-renowned Mogao Grottoes, and Great Wall’s Yumen Guan (Jade Gate), the pass to the old trade routes.

Dating to the 200 BC, the city has a long history and many historical sites. There are 126 important cultural sites, including the Huoshaogou Ruins, four of which are under national protection and five under provincial protection.

Yumen has allocated a total of 17 million yuan in recent years to protect and repair its cultural heritage, launch museum exhibitions, establish a painted pottery museum and set up cultural centers to foster infrastructure and tourism.

Yumen is also planning to build an “oil culture” theme park to make use of its resources as the first petroleum base in China.

“The Belt and Road Initiative will enhance exchanges among Yumen and countries on the trade route, which will attract more visitors to Yumen from home and abroad,” says Gao Zhengsheng, director of the Yumen Tourism Administration.

“We hope Yumen can take the development opportunities created by the initiative and become a sustainable tourism city.”

Li makes about 2,300 yuan a month — after an almost 30 percent pay rise in May — and she is optimistic about the future.

“The income is not quite enough and life is indeed hard, but everything will be better,” Li says.

“My hometown will also become better soon,” she adds.

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