Recently, the TV series "Red Flag Canal" is being broadcast.
The whole drama begins with a dispute over water extraction between two villages in Linxian (now Linzhou City) in the northern mountains of Henan Province, showing the importance and shortage of water resources: someone kneels down to give other villagers an extra can of water, the only requirement for the bride price of the new daughter-in-law who marries over is to bring a jar of water back to her mother's house, and a mother who accidentally overturns a jar of water and hangs herself guiltily...
From this, the feat of "repairing canals and diverting water" was introduced by the people of Linxian County.
In the subsequent plot, we will see that in 10 years, 100,000 people have dug a large canal between the cliffs of the Taihang Mountains with simple and primitive tools, and the rolling river water has been introduced from Shanxi to Linxian County. Eventually, a 1,500-kilometer-long canal was built, like a jade belt, from northwest to southeast, spanning the two provinces of Jin and Henan.
This is the Red Flag Canal, which is known as the "Artificial Heavenly River" and the "Eighth Wonder of the World".
In such an era when it was difficult to eat, what was the force that supported tens of thousands of people to dig canals between the lofty mountains and mountains? How did they achieve the idea of a river flowing entirely by gravity without large pumping equipment and precise measuring instruments?
Today, Uncle Ku will talk about the Hongqi Canal that has attracted the world's admiration and relive the spirit of the Hongqi Canal.
The picture shows the main trunk canal of the Hongqi Canal bypassing the village Xinhua net/Ang Lee, taken by drone on July 4, 2019
1
Lack of water
Geographically, the 800-mile Taihang Mountains stretch between Hebei, Shanxi and Henan provinces, like a sudden wall, standing in the western part of the Great Plain of North China, which is one of the most important geographical coordinates in China.
The picture shows the geographical location of taihang Mountain
LinXian is located in the eastern foothills of Taihang Mountain, the northernmost part of Henan Province, at the junction of Henan, Jin, and Hebei provinces, and was approved by the State Council in 1994 to be withdrawn from the county and set up as a city, which was managed by Anyang City.
Historically, LinXian was a place where natural disasters occurred more frequently. In the 514 years from 1435 to 1949, there were 104 recorded droughts, of which 38 were harvested by major droughts, and the phenomenon of "cannibalism" reached as many as 5 times.
Some of these tragic events are recorded in the Hongqiqu Memorial Hall:
* Fifteen years of the Ming Dynasty, earthquakes three times a day, summer drought, autumn without grass, winter hunger, cannibalism;
* Ming Chongzhen thirteen years, the great wilderness, doumi silver one two three money, cannibalism;
* Twenty-three to twenty-five years of Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, great drought, cannibalism;
* Fourteen to seventeen years of Qing Daoguang, years of drought, cannibalism:
* Qing Guangxu two to four years, since the second year has not been rich, three years of spring without rain, wheat has not been planted. In the spring of the fourth year, the rain valley is born. Starvation, cannibalism, the death of man, about seven out of ten...
There are two stone tablets in Xiaozhai Village, Hejian Town, which stood in the second year of Daming Zhengde and the sixth year of Qing Guangxu, although they are separated by 375 years, the content of the account is the scene of the local drought.
"The population has no food, and the ten chambers are two or three."
The husband sells his wife, yesterday Zhang Li.
The Father forsakes his Son, and this east and west.
Eating human flesh and healing hunger, dying and corpses without meat.
Winter solstice spring, spring and summer.
There are seven dead people. ”
Backed by the Taihang Mountains, which are rich in natural resources, why is LinXian so short of water?
There are four rivers in Linxian County: qihe, huaihe, huanhe and zhanghe, and it is reasonable to say that there is no shortage of water. However, these rivers are of the mountainous type, not only have short runoff and small catchment surface, but also are seasonal rivers, which means that most of the time, the riverbed is waterless.
Surface water is difficult to use, but what about groundwater?
The Taihang Mountains in Linxian county slope from west to east, and the special geological structure of fault landform makes Linxian shaped like a funnel, which is not a stable and good aquifer and aquifer, and the leakage of water is more serious. Even in some basins, groundwater is buried more deeply, which is not conducive to exploitation.
The picture shows the fault landform of the Taihang Mountains Source: Yang Xiao, National Geographic | of China
Groundwater can't be extracted, so what about storing rainwater?
Nor can it. From the perspective of climate, Linxian mountain high ditch deep, the climate is more complex, the annual precipitation is extremely uneven, July and August precipitation accounted for 70% to 80% of the year, spring and autumn and winter precipitation less than one-third of the year.
In addition, when the water comes, the mountain slope is steep and cannot be retained at all, so there is a local folk song: "The drought will rain, the rain will wash away, sweep away the yellow sand, leaving stone eggs." ”
In this extremely harsh living environment, the deep-rooted awareness of the water crisis profoundly affects the lifestyle of the local people.
At that time, Linxian people rarely washed their faces and washed clothes, a basin of water is often the elderly washed the children washed, men washed women washed, washed to wash or reluctant to pour, put aside to clarify, keep the next time to use. Most people only wash their hands, wash their faces, and change into clean clothes during the New Year's Holidays and when they visit relatives and friends.
Because of the lack of water, many girls have married down the mountain, and many young men cannot marry their daughters-in-law.
Whoever adds someone in the village to import, the name of the child should also bring a water word, hoping to get some water vapor.
In order to survive, many Linxian people have to help the old and the young and leave their homes. Although there will be people falling down on the road from time to time, the people who have fled the wilderness are still the successors, they do not know where the end is, only know that where there is water, where there is home.
2
Fight
The plight of the people of Linxian began to change in 1954, when 26-year-old Yang Gui came to Linxian county as the secretary of the county party committee. No one expected that this assigned veteran would change the fate of Lin County.
Yang Gui infographic
Just after joining the company, Yang Gui listened to the local old man tell such a story.
There is a small village in the northwest of Lin County called Sang'erzhuang, the whole village does not have a well, and the draft can only be picked up by the Huangya Spring five or six kilometers away. One day in 1920, the old man of Sanglin Mao was waddling on a mountain path carrying a bucket, and he carefully moved his steps, afraid that the water in the bucket would spill out. At this time, the sky was gradually getting dark, and the daughter-in-law who had recently passed through the door went out of the village to pick up her father-in-law, but before she could take a few steps to pick up the burden, she was tripped by the stones under her feet, and a load of water spilled a fine light.
Seeing that the wrapped dumplings had no underwater pot, the daughter-in-law cried into a tearful person, and the mother-in-law had to go to the neighbor's house to borrow water to boil the dumplings. Unexpectedly, when the dumplings were served on the table, the daughter-in-law had already committed suicide.
Just a load of water has forced a young man into a dead end.
This story deeply shocked Yang Gui. He said bluntly that eating in Lin County is more difficult than fighting on the front line.
Yang Gui began to walk from village to village and traveled to all over Lin County. In the actual visits and investigations, he found that the reason why Linxian is backward is due to many aspects, the most important of which is the lack of water. Without water, there is no food, no roads, no sanitation, and one is bound to get sick.
In the winter of 1956, at the second session of the second session of the CPC Linxian County, Yang Gui, on behalf of the county party committee, issued the slogan of "fighting hard for five years, rearranging the rivers and mountains of Linxian County."
Since then, the climax of water conservancy construction in the county has been repeated, and the social security team has dug holes in the mountains and dug wells and canals in every household. In two years, many small and medium-sized reservoirs, channels and ponds have been built in the county, which not only alleviates the problem of drafting water for people and livestock in some villages, but also effectively increases the irrigation area.
Among them, the role of the overpass canal is particularly prominent.
At the end of 1955, Ren village and town organized more than 2,000 villagers to start construction along the Zhanghe River to build overpasses and canals. The geology along the 17.7 km long canal is very complex and the construction is very difficult. However, with the oath of "the head can be cut off and the blood can flow, and the ten-bridge canal will not be repaired", after 2 and a half years of hard fighting, the water of the overpass canal finally flowed into the dry land, and more than 5,000 acres of land along the canal were irrigated.
The picture shows the overpass canal
The significance of the Tianqiao Canal also lies in the fact that it has accumulated valuable experience for the construction of the Hongqi Canal.
3
great drought
The construction of large-scale water conservancy facilities has brought many changes to Linxian County. At that time, many people believed that as long as they made full use of the water in the river, dug the water underground, and stored the water in the sky, the people of Linxian County could solve the problem of draft water difficulties.
However, a sudden catastrophe shattered those visions.
In 1959, a nationwide drought swept in. In this year, the river in Linxian County stopped flowing, the well pond dried up, and the canals that had been built had no water to draw at all; the mountain springs were dug into wells, and no water could be produced underground; the dry ponds were built to dig water cellars, and no water was given to the sky; and the water canals and reservoirs were repaired, but the water still could not be stored.
The harsh reality forced the Linxian government to reconsider the fundamental solution to the local water shortage.
To completely solve the problem of water shortage, it is necessary to find a new reliable water source, and the Linxian government sent three investigation teams to look for it against the current, and soon locked the Zhanghe River in Pingshun County, Shanxi Province.
The maximum flow of the Huzhang River is 7,000 cubic meters per second, the general flow is 30 cubic meters per second, and the minimum flow is 13.02 cubic meters per second, even in the dry period of the medium drought year, its flow can reach eight or nine cubic meters per second, which is an ideal water source. If the turbid water can be diverted to Linzhou, the water shortage situation will be solved from the root.
The picture shows the turbid Zhanghe Wetland Source: Shanxi Yushe government website
The introduction of Zhangzhang into the forest is a huge system project, and the Linxian government is facing both technical and economic pressures. It should be known that at that time, China was in the period of three years of natural disasters, and the state repeatedly ordered that large-scale projects should not be built to reduce the burden on farmers.
However, without repairing the canal, Lin County had no way out, and Yang Gui could only ask for instructions from the scalp. With the help of provincial party leaders, Shanxi agreed to divert water.
With the belief that "I would rather work hard than endure hardship", the people of Linxian County began a journey of self-reliance in repairing canals.
4
Repair of canals
After many investigations and measurements, the water diversion point was fixed in Houbi, Pingshun County, Shanxi Province.
From the Houbi break to the highest watershed in Linxian County, the canal line must go around the halfway point of the Taihang Mountain, a total of more than 70 kilometers. In that era when there was no pumping equipment, how to achieve complete reliance on the gravity of the river to self-flow, the Zhanghe River water into the territory of Linxian is a big problem.
The altitude of Houbiduan is 464.75 meters, only 14.7 meters higher than the watershed, if the river water is self-flowing without relying on any mechanical labor, it is necessary to ensure that the canal line of more than 70 kilometers from the head of the canal to the watershed is not more than one-eighth of the slope ratio. In other words, for every 8 kilometers of the channel, only 1 meter of drop is allowed.
In theory, water diversion is achievable, but it places extremely high demands on the accuracy of the measurement data. Yang Gui is also most worried about this problem, such a large project, in case the technical data is wrong, the final canal is repaired, the water can not be introduced, labor and money, how to explain to more than 600,000 fathers and villagers?
At this time, someone recommended a young man to him, Wu Zutai.
Wu Zutai infographic
Wu Zutai graduated from the Yellow River Water Conservancy School in Henan Province and was the only technician from LinXian at that time. After receiving the task, Wu Zutai led the survey team to cross the mountains and mountains many times, surveyed on foot, and successively carried out line selection surveys, fixed line surveys, three trunk canals and channel longitudinal sections, and finally, in just two months, the first design blueprint was handed over.
With the design drawings in place, where did the people who built the canal come from?
According to the county regulations, the labor force is apportioned by the communes in proportion to the area benefited by the water. At that time, in dozens of villages of all sizes in Lin County, there was a saying that if you want to win the war, the children and wives should go up together. As a result, on the canal repair road, father and son walk together, and husband and wife accompany each other has become the norm.
On February 11, 1960, more than 37,000 people set out for the Taihang Mountains.
The road to repair the canal was painted with the slogan "Rearranging the Rivers and Mountains of Linxian County"
The question arises again, more than 37,000 people suddenly came to the more than 70 kilometers of canal line, where to live?
The people of Pingshun County helped, and although more than fifty years ago, this small county town was full of more than 100,000 people, but they still did their best to provide more than 230 houses for the canal repair army.
However, the queue is huge, and the ready-made houses are far from enough.
The people of Linxian can only solve the difficulties by themselves. On the edge of the cliff, in the cave and in the crevice of the mountain, they simply used stones to build a simple fence, took a rope and stopped outside, and put the cover roll into it to become a temporary home.
The above under the cliff, known as the "Divine Worker Shop", is where the people of LinXian lived at that time. There was no moisture-proof supplies, so someone cut the cool mat they carried with them into small pieces, distributed them to everyone, and put them under their bodies. In order to prevent falling to the bottom of the mountain after falling asleep, everyone rushes out with their feet out and their heads facing inward when they sleep. It can be said that where the people of Linxian county are building, their homes are safe.
Rest restoration map under the cliff of "Shengong Shop"
Find a good place to settle down, and the construction of the forest will begin. At that time, the county party committee team in LinXian County envisioned "80 days of dry work, attracting the water of the Zhanghe River", but unexpectedly, this repair was ten years.
5
Fight
Soon after the project began, various problems followed.
In order to catch up with the progress, tens of thousands of people were fully rolled out on the canal line of more than 70 kilometers as soon as they came up. Due to the severe shortage of technical personnel, the guidance could not keep up, and most of the villagers could not understand the drawings and went their own way, which led to some people digging the wrong place, and some people blowing up the bottom of the canal.
Li Tiande, then deputy head of the engineering unit of the command headquarters, recalled the scene at that time
If these problems are not addressed in a timely manner, the consequences are unimaginable.
On March 6, 1960, the Linxian County Party Committee "Bringing Zhangzhang into the Forest" Committee held an important meeting in Panyang Village under the county, and promptly adjusted the layout of the canal repair, changing the comprehensive development and rapid decision to shrinking the front, making a section of surprise attack, and doing a section of water, so that the masses can see the achievements, so as to enhance the confidence of victory.
In addition, the meeting also officially named the channel of introducing Zhangzhang into the forest as the "Hongqi Canal".
The programme has changed, and many difficulties remain. The shortage of equipment restricts the construction of the project to a large extent, because there are only two measuring instruments and one level in the county, which are invested in the construction site, which is not enough. At this time, a construction worker named Lu Yin of the Hejian Branch Headquarters proposed a measuring tool called "Water Duck".
Lu Yin is a stonemason, who has followed his father to beat stones and do engineering since he was a child, and has a beautiful job. In the process of dealing with the construction of canals and walls, he also mastered a lot of knowledge of water conservancy engineering, and when everyone was at a loss for the lack of measuring instruments, he thought of "water ducks".
The production method of "water duck" is very simple, it is composed of three wooden boards, the horizontal board is used to master the horizontal, vertical wooden board tied two thin ropes, put it in the basin filled with water, with the front and back two thin ropes aligned with the benchmark, you can measure the required data.
The principle of "water duck" is about the same as the standard level, but the appearance looks a little simple and rustic. Using it to measure the canal line not only saves a lot of money, but also is simple and easy to master.
Lu Yin and his schematic diagram of the "water duck"
In addition to manufacturing tools, Linxian people have also opened various factories to provide auxiliary materials for the project.
When the main trunk canal was built, there was not enough cement explosives, and the people of LinXian decided to build themselves without explosives. The state allocated ammonium nitrate for agriculture, and the masses found sawdust and put on livestock to grind explosives with their own mills, saving more than 1.4 million yuan in homemade explosives alone.
The construction of canals requires a large amount of lime and cement, and the masses burn lime themselves and set up cement factories. A large number of baskets were cut from the mountains by people and woven themselves. In the construction, everyone pays attention to saving materials, repairing old waste, multi-purpose, they make explosive boxes into buckets, ash buckets, carriages, and the bars used are used as pickaxes, and if they don't work, they are used as hammer handles.
After 10 years of hard work, how much did it cost to spend on the entire Hongqi Canal project?
68.6564 million yuan, of which the state subsidy was 10.2598 million yuan, accounting for 14.94% of the total investment, and Linxian self-financing was 58.3966 million yuan, accounting for 85.06% of the total investment. For Lin County, which had only 2.9 million yuan in financial funds that year, these figures are a testimony to the sweat and wisdom of the locals.
6
sacrifice
There are inventions and inventions in the construction of canals, as well as bloody sacrifices.
After the above-mentioned Hongqi Canal project line selection survey was completed, Wu Zutai, who had not returned home for a long time, and his fiancée Bo Huizhen held a wedding. Only four days after the marriage, Wu Zutai returned to the construction site, and did not admit that this walk was a farewell.
On the evening of March 28, 1960, Wu Zutai, who had just left work, picked up his dishes and chopsticks to prepare for dinner, and a villager hurriedly ran to say that a crack had appeared at the top of the Wangjiazhuang tunnel, and Wu Zutai put down the dishes and chopsticks and left. Unexpectedly, when Wu Zutai and Li Maode, director of the Yaocun Health Center, had just entered the cave, the collapse suddenly occurred. Yang Wenchang, who was working in the cave at the time, escaped the disaster because he was shouted out by Wu Zutai.
This young man, who contributed his life to the construction of the Hongqi Canal, was only 27 years old when he died. After Wu Zutai's sacrifice, the villagers on the entire canal line did not touch the water and rice for three days, but only buried their heads and worked hard. In the end, the Hongqiqu Command decided to name the tunnel where the two men died "Safety Cave" as a memorial.
Sadly, such sacrifices have been made more than once.
Plover Cliff is located in Shanxi, on the border between Lin County and Pingshun County, and the terrain is treacherous. Here are three dangerous peaks, Gudui Temple, Jiguan Mountain and Plover Cliff, towering over the south bank of the Zhanghe River, which is a must for the Hongqi Canal.
In order to clear this natural danger, the construction team laid down 3 rope piles composed of steel brazes at the top of the mountain, and people tied ropes, and on the cliffs where there was no upper and lower ground, they carried out construction in the air, hammered and brawled, and continuously shot 39 20-meter-deep gun holes.
In this section of the project, there were a total of 3 major casualties. The worst occurred on June 12, 1960. At that time, the construction of this section of the project was nearing completion, and at the construction site of the Locust Tree Pond Brigade of Chengguan Commune under the Gudui Temple, the villagers were working intensively, and the company commander announced to everyone that "with the consent of the sub-command, we will work hard for one day today, and tomorrow we will all go home to harvest wheat."
Unexpectedly, at about 9 a.m., a boulder on the mountain suddenly collapsed, and a "blood road" rushed out of the construction crowd and rolled down the mountain, killing 9 villagers on the spot and disabling 3 others.
Shi Bingfu, president of the Chengguan Commune and commander of the sub-headquarters, rushed from the construction site of other companies, and when he saw the tragic situation at the scene, he wept bitterly, slapped his head with his hand, and said, "How do I explain to the villagers?" ”
The commanders and doctors of the General Headquarters rushed to the accident section to rescue the wounded, and before they could take a detour from the canal bank, they jumped into the rapidly flowing Zhanghe River and waded through the water, accompanied by the stone ballast that fell from time to time, digging stones to save people... The scene was tragic.
Finally, after more than 50 days of battle, a majestic canal finally passed through the halfway point of the Plover Cliff.
According to the Hongqi Canal Chronicle, during the ten years of the project, 81 villagers died, the oldest was 60 years old, the youngest was 17 years old, and many people did not even leave a single photo.
The major accident at Plover Cliff has sounded a wake-up call. If construction continues, a way must be found to remove loose stones from the cliffs. However, with boulders hanging from the cliffs that go straight up and down, how can ordinary people go up?
At this time, a party member named Ren Yangcheng took the initiative to ask for help and set up a risk removal team to eliminate difficulties and dangers for the villagers repairing canals on the Taihang Mountains.
The members of these exterminatory teams, each with two tens of pounds of ropes tied to their bodies and special iron hooks in their hands, swung around the cliff like a swing, looking for loose stones. The stones that are removed often follow the iron hook in their hands to the head, and if they are not careful, they will hit themselves. In addition, a slight miss, the body collided with the cliff wall, and the consequences were unimaginable.
Ren Yangcheng encountered danger many times, and once, a rolling stone was smashed into his mouth, and four teeth were smashed into his mouth, and blood flowed. Because he was in the danger at that time, the teeth that had not been completely lost stuck in Ren Yangcheng's tongue, he could not cooperate with the person pulling the rope above without shouting, in order to continue to eliminate the danger, he used pliers to uproot his 4 teeth and continued to work on the cliff for 6 hours.
Ren Yang into the data map
Such incidents of "only for the sake of the project, regardless of themselves" are too numerous to mention in the construction process of the Hongqi Canal.
The Youth Cave is the throat project of the Hongqi Canal, and a 600-meter tunnel must be dug to bring the water of the Zhanghe River into Linxian County. However, the composition of the mountain of youth caves is hard as quartz sand, and once hammered down, only one spot can be left. In order to break through this difficulty as soon as possible, Lin County organized more than 300 villagers to raid, in that era, they suffered from puffiness because they did not have enough to eat, but still carried forward the spirit of ants gnawing bones, only with their hands and steel brazes and hammers to create a miracle of 2.8 meters per day of excavation.
After 1 year and 5 months, the tunnel was finally opened, because the villagers who chiseled the cave in this project were all young people, so the tunnel was named "Youth Cave".
The picture shows the Youth Cave
7
Water access
On July 6, 1969, 100,000 villagers participated, and the Hongqi Canal project, which lasted for 10 years, was completed and connected to the water.
On the day of the opening of the water, Zhang Maijiang, the gunner in charge of the project blasting, remembered that more than 100,000 people gathered at the side of the main canal and cried and shouted "Long live Chairman Mao."
The picture shows the scene of the Hongqi Canal on the day of its water supply
A total of 1,250 hills have been flattened in the Hongqi Canal project, and 48 small first- and second-class reservoirs of the "long vine fruit" type have been built along the canal, 346 pond weirs, and a water conservancy reservoir capacity of 23.81 million cubic meters. 45 irrigation stations were built, and 45 small hydropower stations were built to take advantage of the natural gap under the commanding heights. A large-scale water conservancy irrigation network has been formed with the Hongqi Canal as the main body, the Nangu Cave, the Yinshang Reservoir and other water diversion and storage projects as supplements and regulations, and can be introduced, irrigated, drained and comprehensively utilized.
410 administrative villages in 14 townships and towns in Linxian County have benefited, 670,000 people and 37,000 poultry and livestock have been reliably guaranteed drinking water, and 540,000 mu of arable land has been effectively irrigated. The history of ten years of drought and water as expensive as oil has since ended.
At the same time, the Hongqi Canal has also driven the development of animal husbandry, industry, township enterprises, construction, transportation, tourism, tertiary industry and other undertakings, and is proudly called the "Life Canal" and "Happiness Canal" by the people of Linxian County.
The picture shows the main trunk canal of the Hongqi Canal winding through the Taihang Mountains Xinhuanet | Li An, drone photographed on July 4, 2019
On October 8, 1998, Yang Gui published an article in the People's Daily to summarize the spirit of the Hongqi Canal in a concentrated way: For the sake of the people, relying on the people is the foundation of the spirit of the Hongqi Canal; emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts is the soul of the Hongqi Canal; self-reliance and arduous pioneering are the concrete embodiment of the spirit of the Hongqi Canal; unity and cooperation and selfless dedication are the powerful guarantees for the spirit of the Hongqi Canal.
Indeed, the spirit of the Hongqi Canal has always inspired the people of Linxian County.
There is a village of Baiquan in the deep mountains of southern Linxian County, where the treacherous natural environment hinders the villagers' connection with the outside world, and people have been living a self-sufficient but not self-sufficient life deep in the mountains for thousands of years.
In 1966, when the 26-year-old Zhang Fugen was elected secretary of the party branch in Baiquan Village, the construction of the Hongqi Canal was in full swing, and he was infected by this infection and also rose to the ideal of changing the face of poverty in his hometown.
To get rich, build roads first. In the winter of 1969, after the completion of the entire Hongqi Canal, under the leadership of Zhang Fugen, the migrant workers who had just returned to the village from the construction site did not take off their clothes and began to split the mountain and build the road. Mountains are no better than plains, and opening the way is tantamount to shaking mountains. Without funds, Zhang Fugen went around, there was no explosives, he mobilized the masses to crush themselves, and many of the local methods used when building the Hongqi Canal came in handy.
Relying on self-reliance and hard work, the people of the village have a hoe and a shovel, and the amount of engineering in 5 years has only been fought for 124 days, and a 12.5-kilometer-long village-level road has been built. Since then, the whole village has had a way out of the mountains.
8
Feedback
The spirit of the Hongqi Canal not only nourished the whole county, but also went to the whole country and even the world.
In 1974, when New China participated in the United Nations General Assembly, the first film screened was the documentary "Red Flag Canal".
In the early days of reform and opening up, under the guidance of their predecessors, the young people of Linxian County formed a linxian construction army to go out of the Taihang Mountains and run to the market to break into the world. Li Lin'an, whose grandfather and father had both been involved in the construction of the Hongqi Canal, was one of them, and one day in 1982, he left the village with more than 20 companions.
After entering the city, Li Lin'an once carried cement, built wall bricks, worked as a small worker, worked as a team leader, and learned to be an electrician and a technician on a construction site in his hometown. In 1984, he left his hometown construction site and came to Beijing.
In the fierce market competition, he led his brothers from the Taihang Mountains to set up a banner of Linxian County in the Beijing construction market with a short construction period, high quality and faithfulness.
In 1989, Li Lin'an became the general manager of the former Linzhou Third Construction Company, after the company's restructuring, he renamed the enterprise Henan Hongqiqu Construction Group, he said that no matter how the enterprise changed, the blood gushing in the vasculature was always reminding him that he would always be a person of Hongqiqu.
In 2003, Henan Hongqiqu Construction Group won part of the construction of the bird's nest and water cube of the main venue of the Beijing Olympic Games in a strong competition, and in 2013, it contracted the school project in Kuwait and went out of the country for the first time.
Now, on construction sites in various provinces across the country, Linxian people can be seen everywhere. The income and experience accumulated in other places are now slowly returning to Linxian County, and many people have begun to return to their hometowns to establish township enterprises, gradually strengthening the local industrial base.
The construction industry has also become an important supporting force for Linxian's economy. 60% of the peasants' labor force is engaged in construction, 60% of the farmers' net income comes from the construction industry, and 60% of the city's residents' savings deposits also benefit from the construction industry.
In addition to the architectural experience, the blacksmith shop is another heritage of HongqiQu. After the end of the project, many workshops for forging and repairing tools for canal repair were retained, and the steel, heavy industry, and auto parts related to them slowly became the pillar industries of Linxian County.
Guo Xiansheng, chairman of Linzhou Heavy Machinery Group, said, "Without Hongqi Canal, there would be no me today." ”
When he learned that the Hongqi Canal had started, his father quit his official job at the Taiyuan Iron and Steel Factory and returned to work as a blacksmith. Two years later, Guo xiansheng was born.
In 1982, Guo's father contracted the blacksmith shop of the brigade, and Guo Xiansheng also returned to the blacksmith shop to learn to play iron with his father, after which the father and son groped to make accessories for the coal machine factory. Slowly, the father and son made money and formed Linzhou Heavy Machinery.
From a blacksmith shop to the first private listed enterprise in Linzhou, Guo's father and son discovered their creativity from the construction of the Hongqi Canal, went out of the mountains and developed enterprises, relying on hard-working and innovative spirit.
Pictured is the sluice gate of the Hongqi Canal Xinhuanet | Li An, drone photographed on July 4, 2019
Now, Linxian County, which has been upgraded to Linzhou City, has a stable economy in the top ten positions in Henan Province, and the city's GDP in 2018 was 59.09 billion yuan, more than 8400 times that of the canal repair. In December 2018, Linzhou was selected as one of the top 100 regional economic comprehensive competitiveness in China.
What the Hongqi Canal brings to the people of Linxian County is a memory in the depths of the Taihang Mountains, and it is also the spirit of unyielding resistance to change the fate.
More than 50 years later, this spirit still shines brightly.
Resources:
Documentary "Red Flag Canal"
Documentary "Artificial Tianhe: Red Flag Canal"
Hundred Lecture Hall "The Story of Hongqi Canal"
"Looking Back at the Red Flag Canal" | "People's Political Consultative Conference Daily"
"Building a Hollow Dam" | "Anyang Daily"
"Hongqi Canal: The "Artificial Tianhe" on the Taihang Mountain" | "China Architecture News"
"Red Flag Canal: Dreams and Persistence Flowing for Half a Century" | Xinhua
Linzhou City's 2019 Government Work Report | the website of Linzhou Municipal People's Government
Source: Lookout Think Tank
Author: Xie Fang, Observer of Lookout Think Tank Wang Zixian (Intern)
[Disclaimer: This number is an official public welfare account for the decision-making of governments at all levels, enterprises and institutions, and this article is reproduced for the purpose of transmitting more information. If there is a source labeling error or suspected infringement of your legitimate rights and interests, please contact us. We will correct and delete it in a timely manner, thank you. 】