When told that the buses were burning gas due to a shortage of petrol, he said he felt as though he had been stabbed through the heart.

Wang told his fellow workers after he returned to Yumen: "The gas bags alerted me to the pressure our country was under. Without crude oil, we could not develop the industry, so as oil workers, we needed to take responsibility to contribute to the nation's oil industry."

In the 1950s, China faced great economic difficulty due to a shortage of crude oil, which hindered national defense.

In February 1958, the government approved a directive to move petroleum exploration work eastward, and on Sept 26 the following year, the first gush of crude oil burst from the ground in a little-known area of Heilongjiang.

The newly discovered oilfield was named Daqing, or "great celebration", in honor of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the nation's founding.

More than 40,000 veterans, technical experts and oil workers gathered in Daqing to develop the oilfield, including Wang, who led a group of workers from Gansu in March 1960.

Without taking any rest after getting off their train, Wang and his colleagues worked to unload equipment at Daqing railway station.

However, they faced numerous difficulties in transporting large items of equipment, including a drilling rig weighing more than 60 metric tons.

No large trucks were available in the newly founded city to help the workers complete their tasks.

They dismantled the drilling rig and spent three days loading the parts onto trucks for transportation to the oil well, but after the rig was installed, Wang faced a new problem, as the supporting water pipeline was not completed.

To enable work to start as quickly as possible, Wang led his team to fetch water from a small pool 1 kilometer away. Using various items, including buckets and wash basins, the team spent about 24 hours carrying more than 50 tons of water to the oil well.

In the following years, Wang led Drill Team No 1205 in setting a series of records at the oilfield, including reaching the bottom of an oil well 1,200 meters deep in 124 hours.

In April 1960, Wang injured his right leg on drilling pipes, but he left the hospital without doctors' permission to resume work.

His colleagues and local residents, enthused by Wang's passion to conquer extreme fatigue and push himself to the limit, nicknamed him Tieren.

Just three years after it was founded, the Daqing oilfield reached an annual capacity of 5 million tons of oil, ensuring that China was basically self-sufficient in the fuel.

However, the long years of demanding work damaged Wang's health, and he died in 1970 from stomach cancer.

Over the past decades, the oilfield and its workers have battled a range of difficulties, with their work enshrined as the "Tieren spirit", and symbolizing the great changes in China's industrial development.

In March, the oilfield marked a major milestone in producing 2.5 billion tons of crude oil since it was founded, accounting for 36 percent of the nation's total onshore crude oil production.