Mulan Dyke

The large-scale water conservancy engineering is a mixture of all-round utilization of spanning diversion, impounding, irrigation, drainage and retaining. Dating back to the initial year of Zhiping (Emperor Yingzong’s reign) during the Northern Song Dynasty (1064), the marvel was put in service in the sixth year of Yuanfeng (1083, during Emperor Shenzong’s reign) following three makeovers. Sitting southeast-northwest over 583 square meters, the dyke has a length of 110m, 7.25m in height, with 38 water gates in between 39 piers, besides one scouring sluice. Moreover, it is fortified with intake gates each in the north and south embankments, complete with over 100 supporting works on varied-size conduits and channels stretching 113m, facilitating 250,000mu (16,667ha) of irrigated farmland. Long-established since the Song, the miracle stays intact, tremendously instrumental as yet whilst surviving many a surging outpouring of flooding. Certified among the third batch of national key cultural relic protection sites in 1988, Mulan Dyke Water Conservancy and Irrigation Engineering, in 2014, was listed among the first batch of world irrigation engineering heritages by the 22nd International Irrigation and Drainage Conference and International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID).