Water-releasing festival

Qingming Festival is usually a private event in which families honor their lost loved ones by burning paper money at their graves, but in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, the occasion is marked by a torrent of rushing water.

 
Residents of Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, open the gates of the city's ancient dam as part of a local festival observed during the Qingming Festival. The city government hopes UNESCO will include the water-releasing festival in the world intangible heritage list.

On the morning of April 4, the opening ceremony of the 2012 China Dujiangyan Qingming Water Releasing Festival drew thousands to the banks of the Minjiang River, which lies to the west of the city.

The festival will run until April 12.

With a three-volley salute followed by shouts and laughter from the spectators, the river's water started gushing down as workers removed a dam built of bundled limbs and bamboo cages filled with mud and stones. The event took place at the Dujiang Weir, which was built more than 2,200 years ago as a part of an ancient irrigation system.

"It is our Thanksgiving Day," said the organizer of the three-day festival, explaining this thousand-year old tradition is to honor Qin dynasty provincial governor Li Bing who built the weir in 256 BC to tame frequent flooding in the region.

For people in western Sichuan, this annual event is almost as important as the Spring Festival. This region has been known across the nation for its fertility since the weir was put in use, he added.

Around 59 kilometers west of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, the Dujiang Weir is the oldest functioning water-control project in the world.

The weir, which has stood for nearly 2,300 years, silently diverts water to irrigate nearly 70,000 hectares of farmland, which contributes almost one-third of the province's total grain output. It survived the disastrous Wenchuan Earthquake unscathed in 2008.

The longevity of this architectural feat is mainly due to regularly scheduled annual repairs dating back to the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).

When the Minjiang River enters into its low water season in the winter, a temporary dam is built at the weir so the local people can repair the banks and remove the alluvial deposits from the waterway downstream.

And as the high water season arrives in the spring, a ceremony is held to celebrate the surge of water that will irrigate the farmland after the dam is removed.

Since the year 978 AD, the Qingming Festival has been the officially designated day to celebrate the event.

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