From the ground, up
It may have been oil that initially provided the impetus but Karamay city, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, has established itself as an innovative leader in education, Yang Yang reports.
Fu Rongxing and Zhang Bingxi, both 22, are sitting beside the Hongshan Lake at China University of Petroleum-Beijing at Karamay, Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Both are seniors at the university and are in a reflective mood. Fu studies accounting and Zhang studies oil and gas pipeline transportation. The students know that they will have to make a major decision about their lives shortly. After spending three years in Xinjiang, more than 3,000 kilometers away from their hometown in Central China’s Henan province, both say they want to stay after graduation.
“There are a lot of opportunities in Xinjiang, but people usually like the more developed eastern area,” Zhang says.
Fu adds: “After all, Xinjiang has a much smaller population than Henan province, so the pressure is relatively small.”
According to the National Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2018, Xinjiang had a population of about 25 million in its 1.66 million square kilometers. Henan had nearly 4.4 times the population but its area is only a little over onetenth that of Xinjiang’s.
With a population of less than 500,000, Karamay is a comfortable place, Fu says. But three years ago, after the college entrance examinations, when she decided which university she was going to attend, she can clearly remember hesitating at the suggestion of her current university.
“I thought Karamay was a desert, but a high school friend, who came here the year before, told me it’s not,” Fu says.
Times have changed and so has Karamay. About 65 years ago, where today’s modern Karamay stands was indeed a barren part of the Gobi Desert. Situated roughly 400 km from Urumqi, there was no grass or water. Even the birds avoided it.
Then fate, in the form of three letters, seemed to intervene. Oil. Liquid gold was struck. On Oct 29, 1955, a black jet spouted from the No 1 well in Karamay, announcing the birth of New China’s first oilfield. In 1958, Karamay, as a city, was built. People from all over the country traveled thousands of kilometers to work i n what were extremely difficult conditions to provide energy for production and heat for the people.
In those early days pioneers slept in pits they dug to shelter from fierce winds and extreme cold. They had to work in waist-deep snow and - 20 C temperatures. Some died due to the conditions.
Today, on the drive from Urumqi to Karamay, there is little apart from the vastness of the Gobi to distract the driver.
But eventually an oasis appears, providing a greenness that is soothing to the eye. The Karamay River runs through the city. In early morning and dusk, people jog along its lush banks.
In the Uygur language, Karamay actually means black oil. Seen from the viewing platform of Baijiantan, 30 km northeast from the city’s downtown, thousands of pumping units, also nicknamed “kowtow machines”, draw oil from underground. They stand sentinel along the No 217 national highway, extending about 50 km.
Apart from being one of the most important oilfields in China, Karamay has what could be described as an ideal atmosphere for new commerce. Its dry climate provides perfect conditions for cloud computing storage facilities. It is also an important base for the petrochemical industry, and a key site for international trade between China, Central Asia and Europe.
As one of the most developed cities in Xinjiang, Karamay has been trying to attract and nurture talent to further modernize the autonomous region.
New campus
In 2014, Karamay University Town was completed, covering an area of 5.85 million square meters. Besides China University of Petroleum-Beijing, other educational institutions have opened branches in the city. These include Xinjiang Medical University, Karamay Vocational and Technical College, and Xinjiang Technician College.
Currently, there are 1,309 staff members and 14,000 students.
China University of PetroleumBeijing at Karamay, founded in 2015, started receiving students in 2016. Now there are 3,800 students from all over the country. The campus will eventually be able to accommodate 20,000 students.
An outstanding advantage is that the campus contains training facilities that allow students to practice skills covering 20 majors related to oil and gas production, the largest of its kind in China.
Recruiting qualified personnel can be a challenge, says Chen Daen, vice-president of China University of Petroleum-Beijing at Karamay. “So the Ministry of Education organized 15 top universities to help us. Each year, tens of teachers will come to our university from the east, meanwhile, our students can go on exchange programs to other universities,” he says.
Students of computer science, for example, can go to the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu, Sichuan province, students majoring in English to Shanghai International Studies University, and students of finance to the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing. Russian language students can also go to Russia, he says.
Zhang Xing, 36, teaches the most prestigious major at the school — petroleum engineering. This enables students to garner the knowledge and skills regarding the entire process of oil production from detection to extraction.
Wearing an oil worker’s signature red uniform and helmet, he introduces the structure and function of the regular pumping unit to his students at a dedicated training center.
Born in Karamay in 1984, he went to China University of Petroleum in Beijing and stayed in the capital for 10 years. When the new campus was completed, he returned to his hometown “to contribute my part to the development of Karamay”, he says.
Actually, the new campus has attracted many talented people from not only surrounding cities, such as Kuitun and Ili, but also from other provinces, because “the university has provided great opportunities for talent as a key university”, he says, adding that this year, the school will launch eight new majors.
Bigger opportunities
In the last four years, the total enrollment for the petroleum university at Karamay has increased from more than 700 to this year’s 1,200. The admission score has also been raised significantly because the environment in Karamay has improved greatly, Zhang Xing says.
But it’s more than just the academic environment that has improved. Around Hongshan Lake, more than 100 rare birds have been observed. The lake is home to a vibrant eco-culture. The university hosted its first fishing festival in June. More than 1,000 kilograms of fish were cooked to celebrate the graduation of the first students.
Among the first 435 students that graduated in June, 118 chose to stay in Xinjiang.
“About a quarter of our first graduates chose to stay in Xinjiang, and many of them come from other provinces. After four years’ study, they have developed a deep connection with Xinjiang and want to stay here. Besides, they believe that with the Belt and Road Initiative, Xinjiang has bigger opportunities than other places,” he says. Among the 1,200 students that the school admitted this year, over 94 percent come from outside Xinjiang.
Zhang Bingxi also plans to stay after graduation, with his father’s encouragement. One year before he came to the city, his father made a trip to Xinjiang to investigate the local logistics industry, which is one of the great opportunities brought about by the BRI, Zhang Bingxi says.
“With the initiative, various opportunities in Xinjiang have obviously increased, so for me the autonomous region has big potential for development,” he adds.
Wang Lei, 33, is a volunteer Russian language teacher from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Arriving in Karamay in 2019, she planned to stay for just one semester. However, she extended her stay. “They asked me to teach and supervise graduate papers. If I left in the middle, I wouldn’t be able to see the results,” she explains.
Born and growing up in Urumqi, Wang says she has a deep love for Xinjiang, which was why she volunteered to come to Karamay, despite the fact that her twin daughters are only 1 year old.
In the College of Arts and Sciences where she works, there are a total of 14 volunteers from all over the country.
“The petroleum university’s advantage lies in oil and gas exploration, so students of Russian usually also choose courses in this field. With the BRI, if students master both Russian and petroleum industry knowledge, they will be more competitive working for the cooperation with Russia regarding gas and oil trade,” she says.
A fresh approach
Besides higher education, advanced ideas introduced in Karamay No 1 Middle School also attract talented people from all over the country. Under the new system, young students can fully explore their interests and satisfy their curiosity for knowledge, rather than simply study.
At the back of a chemistry classroom on the third floor of Karamay No 1 Middle School is the lab where teacher Cai Xia is working on an experiment with several high school students. Unlike many other middle schools in China, teachers of different subjects at the school have their own classrooms which also serve as their offices.
Rather than having a fixed classroom, students have their own lockers and need to go to different classrooms for lessons on different subjects. Each class has a maximum of 24 students and each teacher has 15 students under their supervision.
“In such small classes, teachers can better communicate with each student,” says Li Guolian, director of Education Bureau of Karamay.
As well as the major subjects, such as Chinese, math, English, physics and chemistry, each semester students are encouraged to choose one artistic subject, including calligraphy, music, illustration or theater, among others.
Cai used to work in another prefecture in Xinjiang, but when she came back to Karamay to visit her parents, she heard about the new education method being applied at the middle school. In 2014, she became a chemistry teacher and started teaching the best students at the school.
“The students are very curious and ask a lot of questions that go beyond their textbooks, so I need to go back to my study at university. It’s a happy process in which both students and teachers can make progress,” Cai says.
Li Shuangyang, 29, from Baicheng, Jilin province, graduated from Jilin Animation Institute some 4,000 km away. Li is a teacher of illustration at Karamay No 1 Middle School. The course, in which students learn to create illustrations on computer starting from scratch, is the most popular artistic subject.
“At Jilin Animation Institute, we were trained as professional illustrators. But I decided to come here to become a teacher because few middle schools have a course which allows me to continue my professional practice while teaching students such an artistic form,” Li says.
“This kind of education method helps to shape students’ future, which is important during a person’s life,” he says.
Four years ago, he helped one of his students, who loves drawing and animation, to enroll at the prestigious Communication University of China to further study animation.
“At the start, it was only an interest, and now it has become his major and he loves it very much,” Li says.
Liu Liyue, a senior high school student, says: “Compared with my friends who study at other schools, studying here is not only for examinations. We know more about what we want and like. It’s not only about studying.”
About a quarter of our first graduates chose to stay in Xinjiang, and many of them come from other provinces.”
Zhang Xing, 36, a teacher of petroleum engineering at the China University of Petroleum-Beijing at Karamay