I have already posted about my fascination with China’s amazing history. This includes the more than two thousand year old irrigation system in Dūjiāngyàn, about an hour train ride from Chéngdū. This engineering feat was key to the Sìchuān region in which we live becoming the food basket of China and consequently important in China’s history.
As shown in the animation below, during the ‘Warring States’ period (453-221BC), the Qín province gradually took over the rest of China, unifying it for the first time and creating the short-lived Qín dynasty (221-207BC). The Emperor of this dynasty was the one with the ego massive enough to conquer the whole country and employ millions of people to create the terracotta army to look after him in the next life. It doesn’t seem that he was a very pleasant man. For example, when visiting the terracotta soldiers in Xīān, we heard that the advanced chrome plating technology died when he did because he made sure that the technical experts were buried alive in his tomb. However, he clearly encouraged and drew upon technological advances and we can thank his ego for contributing to our present understanding of the sophistication of Chinese culture and technology at that time.
Towards the end of this Warring States period, around 256 BC, the state of Qín, which by this time was large and aggressive, created the Dūjiāngyàn irrigation system to conserve water in the dry season and manage floods in the wet season.
Originally, each spring as the snow melted, the Mínjiāng (‘jiāng’ means river) rushed down from the Mínshān (shān means mountains) flooding the Chéngdū Plains, once it hit the silt filled flatlands. Traditionally, the solution would have been to build a dam, but the river needed to stay open to allow boats to take food to the troops conquering more lands in the east. The irrigation project harnessed the river for growing food, using a new method of channeling and dividing the water rather than simply following the old way of dam building. It took four years to build an embankment to divert the water, using stone filled bamboo baskets held in place with tripods. It took a further eight years to gouge out a 20 meter wide channel through the mountain. The Chinese had not yet invented gunpowder – they waited about a thousand years to do that. So, once they discovered how hard the rock was, the 256 BC engineers had to invent a way to split the rock. They used a combination of fire and water to heat and cool the rocks until they cracked and could be removed. It also took thousands of people to do the work. Lí Bīng, the governor of the time, was the master mind behind the whole thing, and is commemorated by a statue at the top of the hill. (I did not take a photo of his statue so you will have to make do with my photo of the plaque nearby, taken because I was struck by the quote saying this was more inspiring than the Great Wall.)
The system is still in use today and irrigates over 5,300 square kilometers of land in the region. It is one of “three great hydraulic engineering projects” of the Qin Dynasty.
This project enabled the Qín region to produce three crops a year to feed its massive armies, and allow them to keep transporting the food to those armies, thus changing the history of China. The abundance of food the system enabled is also credited with leading to more free time and the subsequent laid back rich culture for which Sichuanese are now famous – and we have experienced and continue to enjoy.
As well as being historically interesting, we had heard it is beautiful, so it was on our list of things to do while here. A couple of weekends ago we, and a couple of friends, traveled to check it out. We enjoyed ourselves for several reasons:
- it was nice to get out of the city and walk in a beautiful, interesting place – so different to a New Zealand experience because China’s beauty spots have been inhabited for thousands of years
- we were getting to know friends better – making friends continues to be important to us – having arrived in a new country where the only person either of us know is each other
- we were encouraged by being more skilled, and therefore more relaxed, travelers than our first time using public transport.
We caught the train. The general rule here is to buy tickets at least one day early to be sure you get a seat, and one of our friends did that for us – one way it was more relaxing. We got up early and traveled the 15 stops from our nearest metro station to the North Railway Station where our train would leave from. This was a new venue for us but we know the time to walk to our station, know where to look to see how long the metro would take, and were confident we could find our way to the boarding gate if we arrived a bit early – which proved to be the case. Last time, I checked out the bus station route beforehand to be sure.
The train was very pleasant. We almost missed our stop because we were so busy chatting – but I noticed it just in time. We followed the crowds to the bus stop, caught a bus into Dūjiāngyàn town, got off where it looked familiar to our friends who had been here once before, but didn’t remember details, and explored. It was a lovely mixture of historical buildings, traditional looking shops, street food and bush walking. We climbed up the hill, took the escalator to the very top, climbed up the high pagoda, enjoying the stunning views, then walked down the hill, across the swinging bridge, through the manicured gardens, and back to the quaint shopping area. We enjoyed drinks by the river and walked back to find somewhere for dinner by the river and bridge that was just being lit up, before heading back to catch the train.
It is an indicator of how much more relaxed we are becoming, that we nearly missed the train. To be safe we would have foregone dinner, but we wanted it. We thought we were fine, but the bus took longer than we predicted (all the time not being 100% sure that we were on the right one, despite my having asked the driver in Chinese if it went to the railway station and having been encouraged by his seeming to understand me and me him). We ran the short distance from the bus stop to the station, went straight through check in because by then nobody else was there, scrambled onto the train at the first open door, walked through a couple of carriages, and sat down in our seats literally one minute before the train pulled away. We had to ask a woman to move from our seats. She had reasonably assumed nobody would be using those four seats. Once I calmed down, I felt decidedly local!
Okay not local yet, but we feel we are on the way.