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Special Report  

Legacies of Civil Engineering

By staff reporters TANG SHUBIAO, ZHAO YAYUAN & JIAO FENG

    CHINA is not afraid of thinking big when it comes to water infrastructure projects. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River is just one recent addition to a long history of achievement that goes back to antiquity. The story of Yu the Great is the earliest example of China's efforts to control its rivers.

    Some 5,000 years ago, the Yellow River Valley was perpetually plagued by floods that submerged farmland and caused many deaths. The tribes along the river got together and elected a man called Gun to curb the severe floods. However, despite trying for nine years Gun failed to achieve this and was executed for his failure.

    His son Yu was selected to take over the work. Highly motivated for obvious reasons, Yu made several exploratory missions and found out why his father's efforts had been in vain. He embarked on a program of building and reinforcing dikes and dams and dredging out channels. He also dug new watercourses to lead the floodwaters harmlessly to the sea.

    Yu dedicated himself to flood control for over a decade. Although he passed by his home three times, he did not go inside, saying that as long as people were suffering, he could not break off his work; rather, he should put in more effort. People called him Yu the Great for his dedication and achievements. His dredging approach became an effective tool in flood alleviation.

Ximen Canals

    The Ximen Canals are a large-scale irrigation system built in the early years of the Warring States Period (475-221 BC). The canals drew off water from the Zhanghe River and irrigated the areas south of that river (north of today's Anyang, Henan Province).

    They were built, it is believed, by Ximen Bao, the magistrate of Yecheng County. Prior to his taking office, the county had been at the mercy of corrupt officials who imposed heavy taxes to conduct a ritual called the "river god's wedding." But actually the tax revenue was carved up between the officials and a sorceress. She would look for a pretty young female and throw her into the river as a "bride" for the river god. The sorceress terrorized locals by predicting that floods would destroy the county if no bridal sacrifice was made.

    Seeing the people's suffering, Ximen Bao firmly opposed this ceremony, so the next time the ritual day came around he complained that the girl selected was not pretty enough and asked the sorceress to personally explain to the river god. Splash! He threw her into the river to swim with the fishes. After this local officials no longer dared to inflict burdensome taxes on the pretext of the "river god's wedding."

    Afterwards, Ximen Bao mobilized the people to dig a system of canals to divert water from the Zhanghe to irrigate their fields.

    The canal started west of Yecheng. The system of 12 canals, involving 12 weirs and 12 dams, not only controlled flooding, but also resulted in bumper harvests in future years.

    In 1959, the Yuecheng Reservoir was built on the Zhanghe River to replace the aged canals.

Dujiangyan Irrigation System

 

The Bottleneck Channel prevents floods on the west side of the mountain and irrigates farmland in the east side.

    Located on the Minjiang River in western Sichuan Province, Dujiangyan is the world's oldest water conservancy project to divert water without a dam. The project, built in 256 BC and designed by a father and son team, still plays an important role in irrigation and flood control.

    Populations near the Minjiang River were plagued by flooding, so local official Li Bing and his son were assigned to construct an irrigation and flood relief system. The project was built on its upper and middle reaches where the water rushes out from the mountains and flows to an alluvial fan plain. Its main constructions include Bottleneck Channel (Baopingkou), Fish Mouth Dividing Levee (Yuzuiyan) and Flying Sand Spillway (Feishayan)

    They decided to draw water by diverting it through the Yulei Mountain. They dug out a pass 40 meters high, 20 meters wide and 80 meters long. Shaped like a bottleneck, the pass leads excessive water flow from the west side of the mountain to the east side, preventing floods while irrigating farmland.

    The terrain is higher on the east side of the mountain than on the west, so to keep up the flow of irrigation water Li Bing designed and built an ingenious dividing levee (known, because of its shape, as the Fish Mouth Levee). This separates the water into outer and inner streams. The former joins the Minjiang's main stream and the inner one flows to the Bottleneck Channel.

    At the rear part of the levee, a spillway was constructed to transport sand and other sediments to the outer river so as to prevent silting up the inner river and the Bottleneck Channel. Therefore, this part is called the Flying Sand Spillway.

    This early example of civil engineering ambition created a complete and scientific irrigation and drainage network, bringing prosperity to the area. Two millennia on it is as resilient as ever: Dujiangyan is very close to the epicenter of the massive earthquake that hit Sichuan in May 2008. The levee cracked and a sluice control room and standby generator room collapsed, but the irrigation system as a whole was not badly damaged: regional irrigation recovered within a few days of the disaster.

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VOL.59 NO.12 December 2010 Advertise on Site Contact Us