Visit to Chengdu (part 5, Dujiangyan Irrigation Project)

2300 years ago, a Chinese engineer supervised the building of the
Dujiangyan Irrigation Project 

on the Min River.  It had three purposes:  

1)  Irrigating more that 2 million acres of farm-land

2)  Flood control

3)  Harvesting sand for use in building projects

It is an official "UNESCO World Heritage Site."

Entrance area:  Eetu (Finland), Felipe (Italy), Caroline (Chile), Paula (U.S.A.), Max (Germany)

Cool Chinese art:

We learned about the migration of incredible numbers of birds, across China, from the Wild China documentaries.  (highly recommended!)

Every Chinese park has statues to honor great thinkers and poets:

Felipe and Max, also great thinkers!

There were a couple of swinging, cable bridges, across the river and the canal.  The kids (and Chris) had fun "getting them going!!!"


                                                                                 Hang on!

We never could figure out what these were, built into the hillside, above the river........????


(Nothing explanatory was written in English, and people in most of China are limited to saying only "Hello" and "How are you?"  in English.)

Chris, on the Dam

Looking down at the 2300-year-old "channel-splitter", built to control the river

Parts of the irrigation project are obviously more modern:

 

Caroline, checking out the ball, inside the lion's mouth.  (Even when the sculpture is of stone, the ball inside the mouth is carved independently.)

This superstitious behavior is all about closing one's eyes, spinning around until a bit dizzy, and then walking toward some characters, with eyes still closed. 
 Good luck or Good fortune is yours, if your hand touches the wall in just the right spot.

Temples, temples, everywhere!

"Our kids"

Watching the workers here, reminded me of our work in Malawi, Africa.  They were mixing cement by hand, carrying it in buckets, and building a wall, using small-kiln-fired, local bricks.

View of the spillway (canal), created by the Dujiangyan Project, 2300 years ago

View of the town, from a temple

Sections of this town were hard-hit by the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

Hungry????

I tried eating a bug, just so that I could say, "I did it!"  We had recently watched a TED talk about how much energy goes into creating a pound of beef, versus a pound of insect protein; and about how people should consider insects as a source of food.  I'm not quite there, yet!!!