Water's ways
As I mentioned the other day, we in this part of China are experiencing a severe drought. Beijing has not any recordable precipitation in more than 100 days previous to Thursday's snowfall. Because of the continued growing population of Beijing, a population that cannot be supported by the natural water supply of the region, there are discussions of diverting water from the South to keep up with the demand in the North.
This, of course, is nothing new. Large water diverting projects in China have been around for thousands of years, though some of the earliest famous ones date from the Yuan Dynasty, engineered by Guo Shoujing. Here he is being honored in our local Changping Park.
What interests me, though, is not just the projects themselves, but also how some of these projects have become obsolete, even though the bones remain. The countryside surrounding Changping, up to the Great Wall, is full of the ghosts of water projects past. Some appear to have a fairly recent yet relatively short time of use, and others seem to be older. Over the Spring Festival holiday, we spent some time walking near the Jiankou section of the Great Wall.
We followed an abandoned canal and parked in the village of 西栅子 (Xizhazi) before we walked around. What was particularly striking to me was how well constructed this canal was, how solid and square its walls, and how it's now just treated as an interruption in fields.
The village names in this area, too, were remnants of a water-based past. Xizhazi means, literally, West Lock, and near this village on our GPS were Houzhazi and Qianzhazi, other villages named for locks that no longer exist. Not only is the structure still in place, but also the village names reflect another era's use.
This, of course, is nothing new. Large water diverting projects in China have been around for thousands of years, though some of the earliest famous ones date from the Yuan Dynasty, engineered by Guo Shoujing. Here he is being honored in our local Changping Park.
What interests me, though, is not just the projects themselves, but also how some of these projects have become obsolete, even though the bones remain. The countryside surrounding Changping, up to the Great Wall, is full of the ghosts of water projects past. Some appear to have a fairly recent yet relatively short time of use, and others seem to be older. Over the Spring Festival holiday, we spent some time walking near the Jiankou section of the Great Wall.
We followed an abandoned canal and parked in the village of 西栅子 (Xizhazi) before we walked around. What was particularly striking to me was how well constructed this canal was, how solid and square its walls, and how it's now just treated as an interruption in fields.
The village names in this area, too, were remnants of a water-based past. Xizhazi means, literally, West Lock, and near this village on our GPS were Houzhazi and Qianzhazi, other villages named for locks that no longer exist. Not only is the structure still in place, but also the village names reflect another era's use.
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