David and I recently had the opportunity to go see Dujiangyan irrigation system – which is a major tourist attraction and an engineering masterpiece!

We left the house at 8am, and after riding various forms of transportation we arrived around 10am. Our transportation that day consisted of taxis, public buses, a tourist bus, the underground subway, and the above ground high-speed railway. I think we covered it all. David’s comment was something like, “Wow, everything went really smoothly. Just buy the ticket and get on!” My thought was more like, “How exhausting!” I think I may have had a moment of missing owning a car Even in this crazy traffic here. . .

So, it’s actually pretty impressive how all of this went down. . . the gigantic Min River would flood EVERY year and cause a lot of destruction and unrest. So, the engineer Li Bing proposed building an artificial levee which he built by wrapping stones in bamboo! We saw quite a few of them out on display. He also used a combination of fire and water to heat and cool the rock in the mtn until it could be broken up and removed to clear a passageway. He used the levee and new route to split the river so it would not flood. In the event of even higher waters, he also made an addition route to an overflow dry area. I know my explanation is probably more confusing that interesting, so you could just google it It worked though, because there have been no floods since!

The only sad part is that the people have built a temple there to worship Li Bing (the engineer). . .