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| Close shot of the fish mouth |
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| The Fish mouth functions to divide the flow of water into an inner river and an outer river. The outer river is also called Jinma River which is used to discharge the water. While the inner river is used to irrigate, so it get the name "Irrigation River". Long ago, when Li Bing worked as the local governor of the Shu State, he found the old river canal was too narrow to hold much water, which often overflowed the banks and caused disastrous flood. Based on natural geographic conditions, he organized the people to build a man-made dam. The whole dam looks like a fish, and the front dam has a circular cone shaped like a fish mouth. It is the dam that channels water into an outer canal and an inner canal. The outer water canal functions as the main stream and holds sixty percent of water in the river. The extra water goes through the inner canal for irrigation in Chengdu areas. Nowadays, the fish mouth is made of stones and concrete with 80 meters long, 39.1 meters wide and 6.6 meters high. The coordiantion between the fish mouth and the bottleneck plays the role of discharge the water. |
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Written and photographed by: Luo Man and Dong Ting |
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