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In ancient time, about 2,000 years ago Ling
Canal is an irrigation canal. The canal was once an important means of
transports serving the region before railways and roads were constructed.
Now this canal still serves it purposes by irrigating about 2700 hectare
of agricultural lands.
Looking at the way that the canal been constructed brings to our thought
on the wisdom achieved by the ancient peoples in the engineering fields
employed in the construction of dam and embankment. Dams were mainly made
of woods and stones. Studies revealed that logs were first pile and stacks
up in the water to stabilize the ground. Thereafter, slabs of stone were
placed against the logs to form an embankment. Each stone slab has a groove
cut into it for an iron bar to slot through it to joint up each slab together
to form a continuous embankment, which stretches for five hundred meters
in length.
The most interesting section of the canal is the Doumen (Steep Gates)
section, which is just like the boatlift in the Gezhouba Dam. Tourists
were usually taken to see this section of the channel, which stretches
from the Canal Mouth Village at the north to the river mouth in the south,
which has a seven-meter water passage lift. All in thirty-six steep gates
were built in order for boats to pass through from one section of the
canal to another section of canal. Earliest records on the building of
these gates date back to the Tang Dynasty. Gates at that time were made
of woods and later stones slab were introduced to fortify it during the
Ming Dynasty. During the Tang Dynasty, 18 gates were built and then it
has doubled to 36 numbers of gates between the periods of Song, Yuan,
Ming and Qing dynasties.
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