"As far as I am concerned, they signed the papers saying they accepted the severance terms," he said. Na said he doesn't handle the affairs of retired or fired workers.
Even for those who still work, the future may be bleak in a town that was held up as a model of industrial development by China's former leader Mao Zedong.
"Many of us took the package because we are worried about Daqing's prospects," said Daqing taxi driver Jiang Xiaoping, over the Taiwanese pop music blaring from her cassette player. She accepted 99,000 yuan in severance from CNPC in November 2000 after 22 years driving trucks and chauffeuring senior managers.
"We hear the field is getting old and there isn't much oil left," she said.
That's something of an overstatement. There are still about 700 million tons (5.2 billion barrels) of oil in the ground, enough to keep Daqing's 12 oilfields going for another 30 years.
Even so, output is declining and one by one, the 60,000 pumps that dot the yellow earth surrounding the town are being stilled.
At Daqing's No. 8 oilfield, where more than three dozen oil-well pumps, known in China as kow-tow machines, pump oil from among the scrub and lines of stone walls, output has been falling since reaching a peak in 1999, said a field engineer who identified himself only as Zeng. Even if the field runs out of oil, the 40-year old Zeng said he expects PetroChina to provide him a comfortable retirement.
It's a faith in the old system no longer shared by some of his former colleagues.
"These workers better start thinking about their future," said Zhao, the protesting former oil worker. "The problems we face now, they will face too."
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