Posted 2016/6/15
Irrigation is pivotal to agriculture. There are lots of world-famous irrigation projects built in ancient China. These projects are known not only for their large scale, but also for their good design.
Way back in the Xia Dynasty, the Chinese people mastered primitive irrigation techniques, which contributed to the formation of the basic farmland irrigation system capable of water storing, channeling, irrigating and draining in the Western Zhou Dynasty. In the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods, one big-scale irrigation project after another was finished, including Dujianyan Irrigation System, the Zhengguo Canal etc. These projects greatly boosted the agricultural development in the Central Plains and western Sichuan. Later, the boom of agricultural irrigation systems gradually spread to the whole country, giving rise to a lot of projects (such as the Six Canals and Bai Canal in central Shaanxi) in the north during the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties. At the same time, large-scale irrigation projects made their way to the south of the Yangtze River.
In the Wei, Jin Dynasties and beyond, irrigation projects were further developed in the south of the Yangtze River. In the Tang Dynasty, these projects were distributed almost all across the country. And the construction of irrigation projects reached a fever pitch in the Song Dynasty. Large-scale irrigation works continued to be built in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, but not as many as in the Song Dynasty. Meanwhile, small-scale farmland irrigation works were mushrooming in local areas.
Various types of irrigation works can be found almost everywhere in China, and some of them are still serving the purpose they were designed for.
