"Zhen" literally means a ditch beside a field. A large canal is a large-scale integrated irrigation system.
Over the past 20 years, the administrative district has built the Shimen Canal in Taoyuan, which draws water from the middle reaches of the Dahan River into the Shimen Reservoir to irrigate 1.1 million acres of dry land in Taoyuan City.
The Changhua Canal was built in Changhua, diverting the Zhuoshui River to irrigate 400,000 acres of land in Changhua City.
The Fengshan Canal was built in Fengshan to divert water from the Gaoping River to irrigate 300,000 acres of land in Fengshan County.
The Yunlin Canal was built in Yunlin, using water from the Zhuoshui River to irrigate 750,000 acres of farmland in the Yunlin Plain.
They are also building the Jianan Canal on the Jianan Plain, with the plan to divert Taiwan’s fourth largest river, the Zengwen River, to irrigate 1.5 million acres of farmland in Chiayi and Tainan!
Among them, the Jianan Canal has the largest irrigation area, the highest construction difficulty, and the longest construction period. Since the construction started in the eighth year of the Wanli reign, it has taken a full ten years to build!
The project was finally completed in April this year. After three months of acceptance and debugging, it finally reached the trial operation stage.
To celebrate this significant moment, the Taiwan Special Administrative Region held a grand floodgate opening ceremony. Even Zhao Hao personally attended the ceremony to cut the ribbon to show his importance to the water conservancy project!
The ceremony was held at the Wusantou Reservoir, the core of the entire canal.
This huge reservoir is located in the upper reaches of Guantian Creek, a tributary of Zengwen Creek. It is an ultra-large off-trough reservoir built by using the low-lying valley in Wushanling as a water storage tank.
The total length of the reservoir dam is 1,273 meters, the bottom width is 303 meters and the height is 56 meters.
The main body of the dam is built with traditional earth-stone structure. This allows local materials to be used, greatly reducing construction costs. Although Jiangnan Group's cement and steel production is already amazing, but infrastructure construction is underway in various places, and the demand is even more amazing. If you want to build a concrete dam, it's still unknown when it will be built.
Moreover, the earth-rock dam has a simple structure, is easy to maintain, and has good adaptability to deformation, making it the most suitable for use on the earthquake-prone island of Taiwan. The requirements for the foundation are also low, so the construction technology is simple and the process is few. Dayu used it and it was praised by everyone, and it has never been outdated for thousands of years!
However, Jiangnan Construction still upgraded its construction technology. They used a Zhang Jian steam engine to pump a large amount of water to the embankment. This allowed the workers to lay sand and gravel while pouring water. In this way, fine-grained sand and gravel penetrated and filled the cracks between the big stones. Then they used a stone mill to roll and compact it layer by layer before it became solid.
In order to meet Zhao Hao's standards for a century-old project, the construction workers built a layer of mortar-stone slope protection on both sides of the earth-rock dam, and added a layer of concrete shell on the outermost layer.
The former can protect the earth-rock dam from being eroded by water flowing along the dam, while the latter can maintain the stability of the protective slope and prevent water seepage.
In addition, because it is a Licao reservoir some distance away from the river where the water is drawn, the Jiangnan Construction Company No. 8, which undertook the construction, also dug through Wushanling and built a three-kilometer water diversion tunnel, so that the water from Zengwen Creek can be introduced into the Wushantou Reservoir through the funnel-shaped water intake, becoming the main living water supply to the Jianan Plain.
Add to that the north-south water supply trunk line that runs across the Jianan Plain, and it’s no wonder that such a massive and arduous project took a full ten years!
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The floodgate-opening ceremony was held on the dam. Zhao Hao and several senior executives of the group, the Taiwan Administrative Region Management Committee, city officials from Tainan, Chiayi, and Yunlin, officials and engineers from the Jiangnan Water Conservancy Design Institute and Jiangnan Construction Company No. 8, and most importantly, the 300,000 migrant workers who built this grand project by carrying materials on their shoulders and pushing them with their hands, all came.
In fact, the total number of full-time construction workers has always remained above 10,000 and has never exceeded 20,000.
Three hundred thousand is the number of people who participated in the dam construction over the past ten years, while the combined population of Tainan, Chiayi, and Yunlin is only 800,000.
That is to say, almost all adult males in the three cities supported the construction of the dam during the slack season under the organization of the commune. Moreover, it was voluntary labor with their own dry food, which did not add any burden to the construction party.
At this time, the Wusantou Reservoir, which embodies the hard work and earnest expectations of the group, the management committee, and the people of the three cities, has reached its lowest operating water level.
On the dam, there stands a huge object wrapped in red silk.
Amid the sound of gongs, drums and firecrackers, Zhao Hao, Hua Bozhen, vice chairman of the group and chairman of Jiangnan Construction Group, and one hundred migrant workers, engineers and management cadres together peeled off the red silk, and a two-meter-high granite statue revealed its true appearance.
The content of the statue is a group portrait, with a total of nine characters, which can be divided into three groups.
In the front are two technicians, one wearing thick glasses and holding a blueprint and a ruler, while the other carries a bundle of ropes, rulers and a spoon-shaped drill. They represent engineering design and management personnel respectively.
The middle group had the largest number of people, consisting of six migrant workers who were pulling and pushing from the front and back, trying their best to transport a full truck of earth and rocks onto the dam.
The last one was a woman carrying a load on her back, bringing water and dry food.
The three groups of characters are closely connected into a whole, heading in the same direction and moving upward together!
All the characters are strong and full of power. Everyone has bright eyes and a face full of hope!
Under their feet are eight powerful characters that everyone can understand - 'Unity is the key to success'!
The person who wrote the title is Zhao Hao.
Under this "Jia Nan Canal Construction Memorial Statue", everyone observed a moment of silence for 282 seconds to mourn the 282 construction workers who died during the construction of the canal.
"They are migrant workers, technicians, and management cadres. They come from Shandong, Zhejiang, Nanzhi, Fujian... The oldest is 48 years old, and the youngest is only 15 years old. Their names will be forever engraved on the back of this monument, so that they can rest in peace watching the miracle they created forever!"
As Zhao Hao delivered his moving eulogy, everyone looked towards the direction the statue and the martyrs were looking.
The dam surrounded a beautiful lake, and the surrounding winding mountains had become the lakeshore. Looking down from a high place, the entire reservoir area was like a tree of green coral, so beautiful that it made people intoxicated.
There are also countless egrets, wild ducks and cormorants wandering on the lake, making this magnificent scenery come alive.
Many people couldn't help but shed tears. This magnificent scene was created by their own hands!
"The 282 martyrs can rest in peace among the green mountains and clear waters. We who are still alive must work hard and use all our strength to turn the barren Jianan Plain into a fertile land of fish and rice! Only in this way can we live up to our ten years of hard work and the heroic spirits of the martyrs!"
"United as one, man can conquer nature!"
"United as one, man can conquer nature!"
"United as one, man can conquer nature!"
Amid the thunderous slogans of 300,000 people, 100 advanced model workers in the construction of the Jianan Canal worked together to turn the winch group. The thick iron chain rattled and the two reinforced concrete sluice gates inside and outside slowly rose up!
There are three sets of sluice gates arranged side by side on the dam, and the water outflow can be controlled by the number of gates opened.
Because it was a trial run, only one group was opened this time. But the scene of the five-meter-wide gate opening and the thousands of lake water rushing out was spectacular enough!
The mighty water flowed like a waterfall from the outlet in the middle of the dam into the concrete water tank in front of the dam. Immediately, the water was pounding like pearls and jade, and the foam was surging back. The rising water mist was like smoke rising into the sky, blowing in the wind, making the onlookers feel cold all over.
Cheers louder than the sound of the waterfall resounded throughout the sky, and happy people jumped and danced excitedly, running forward following the jubilant green water...
After the water flows out of the reservoir, it flows forward two kilometers along a straight waterway, then splits into two, going north and south.
The South Main Line runs south from Wushantou, crosses Guantian Creek and Zengwen Creek, and goes to Tainan, irrigating 630,000 acres of land there.
The northern trunk line runs north along Wushantou, crossing the Guichong River, Jishui River, Bazhang River, and Puzi River, and finally ends at Beigang River, nourishing 870,000 acres of land in Pingtung and Yunlin.
The land north of Beigang Creek is irrigated by the Yunlin Canal.
Moreover, the Beigan Line and the Zhuogan Line, which is drawn from the Zhuoshui River, the longest river in Taiwan, are connected by an underground canal under the riverbed of Beigang River, using the inverted siphon principle to exchange water and support each other.
The remaining work is to build branches, sub-lines and water diversion channels according to needs to create a dense irrigation network.
In this way, the abundant water from the Wusantou Reservoir and Zhuoshui Creek can reach every corner of the Jianan Plain through these networks and irrigate the long-dried land!
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However, if this hard-earned water is left to flow freely without being conserved and managed, most of it will be wasted.
That would not only be a pity, but would also lead to insufficient water supply downstream, or even no water available. At that time, disputes would inevitably arise, and if things went wrong, there might even be a fight.
Since ancient times, most of the armed conflicts between clans and villages across the country were over water...
The immigrants are all armed militiamen. Once bloodshed occurs, it may turn into a small war.
This is not alarmist talk, but a bloody lesson that has happened many times in other administrative districts. Although the group quickly dispatched troops and put them out with thunder and lightning, and then arrested those who should be arrested and executed those who should be executed, there was even a precedent of the entire commune being disbanded and redistributed.
But the price of mending the fence after the sheep have been lost is undoubtedly painful, and the best way is to prevent problems before they arise.
Fortunately, thanks to the group's strong organizational and scientific management capabilities, the administrative district was able to accomplish this task without spending too much cost.
The administrative region’s Water Resources Department has set up the Jianan Water Resources Office, which unifies the leadership of the maintenance, improvement, and construction of water diversion lines in the three cities, and allocates water shares based on the actual conditions of each commune.
The water conservancy department of each commune had only two or three staff members, who were already very busy just in terms of uploading and downloading information and statistics on water allocation. The specific work still had to be assigned to the production teams.
In principle, all water-using production teams must take charge of the construction of small and medium-sized water supply channels at the end of the waterway under the leadership of the commune’s water conservancy department.
It is not as simple as digging a ditch to divert water. It must comply with the standards of the Water Conservancy Bureau. Not only must the width and depth meet the standards, but it must also be paved with cement and covered with a cover. Or a coarse ceramic water pipe must be laid to prevent waste leakage and evaporation.
Each production team had to set up a water conservancy team, which was responsible for daily inspection and cleaning of the canal section, observing the effect of rotation irrigation, and reporting the difference in actual water consumption to the commune water conservancy department, which would then adjust the water supply plan based on the report.
The water conservancy team then allocates water quotas according to the irrigation rotation schedule set by the water conservancy department and notifies members to come out for irrigation at the specified time.
The water conservancy team does not increase the burden on the brigade, because the work is meticulous and tedious, but does not require heavy physical strength, so the members are all elderly people.
However, because it requires simple calculations and daily records, only the elderly people under the Jiangnan Group can take on this job.
This is the benefit of universal literacy. There is always a job suitable for you.
After the Water Conservancy Headquarters formulates a plan, the Water Conservancy Department issues instructions, and the Water Conservancy Group allocates quotas, the top and bottom work together to at least double the water utilization rate, making the Jianan Plain truly another Jiangnan...