Xinhua News Agency, Chongqing, May 13 (Xinhua) -- Baiheliang Underwater Museum: Exploring the thousand-year-old treasures under the river
Xinhua News Agency reporters Zhao Jiale, Wu Yanxia, Wu Nan
There has always been a folk proverb in Fuling District, Chongqing: "The white crane leaves traces of victory around the beam, and the stone fish comes out of the water for a good year." ”
The white crane beam was originally a natural stone beam with a length of 1,600 meters and an average width of about 15 meters in the Yangtze River in the north of Fuling. Baiheliang is submerged in the river water all the year round, lying along the river, and in the past only exposed the water during the dry season in winter and spring. The beam is carved with two stone fish, which is particularly special. Through the continuous observation of the ancients, it was found that the next year after the stonefish was exposed to the water was often a bumper harvest year, so the law of "the stonefish out of the water trillion year" was gradually summarized. After the Three Gorges Dam impounded 175 meters, Baiheliang sank to the bottom of the river forever. Today, the Baiheliang Underwater Museum allows visitors to go deep into the Yangtze River and get a glimpse of the stonefish.
Taking the elevator with a length of more than 90 meters, visitors will arrive at the Baiheliang Underwater Museum visiting the corridor about 40 meters underwater in the Yangtze River. Through the glass, the details of the stone fish are clearly visible. The two stone fish each have 36 scales, the female in the front and the male in the back, the female fish has a lotus flower in her mouth, and the male has a grass in her mouth, as if cruising and chasing in the water.
The picture shows two stone fish on the white crane beam. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhao Jiale
"The saying that 'stone fish out of the water has a trillion years' did not come out of thin air." Yang Bangde, director of the Baiheliang Underwater Museum, said that some experts had accurately measured the eyes of the Pisces fish, and were surprised to find that the elevation of the eyes of the stonefish was very close to the zero point of the local water level. Whenever the river dries up and the stone fish comes out of the water, people judge the degree of the river by observing the distance between the fish's eye and the water surface, which coincides with the principle of "zero point of the water gauge" used by modern hydrological stations. Stonefish often emerge from the water during the driest period of the year, after which rainfall begins to increase gradually, making it possible to increase production.
"In the seventh year of Xining, the water has come to this point." "Yuanfeng nine years...... The river is now five feet below the fish. "Minsheng Company's Yuwan Riverbed Investigation...... Chongqing's water level receded by one foot and six inches. Around the two stone fish, the ancients also left a series of hydrological observation records on the beam, which recorded the dry water hydrological data of 72 years in more than 1,200 years since the second year of Tang Guangde (764 AD).
"The scientific value of Baiheliang has also been recognized by the world and is known as 'the world's first ancient hydrological station'." Yang Bangde introduced that to this day, these inscriptions still have their practical significance. Nowadays, people have inscribed data to count the historical hydrological and water level conditions of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, summarize the occurrence cycle of dry water and floods in the Yangtze River, and explore the hydrological changes of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, which provides an important reference for water conservancy construction, hydraulic development and shipping development in the coastal areas of the Yangtze River.
The scene of Baiheliang rising water and disappearing and the water drying up has become a unique scenery in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River, attracting literati, officials, and businessmen from Fuling to come to "check in" one after another. The inscription on the white crane beam is the culmination of the literature and calligraphy of the famous masters of the past dynasties, and is known as the reputation of "underwater stele forest".
Among them, there is a sentence "Yuan Fu Gengchen Fu Weng Lai", engraved in the Northern Song Dynasty Yuan Fu three years (AD 1100), it is believed that the Song Dynasty poet and calligrapher Huang Tingjian returned to the east through Fuling, and visited the White Heliang inscription. In this inscription, the word "come" is split into two parts, the upper one "go" and the lower one "no".
The picture shows the inscription of the words "Yuan Fu Gengchen Fu Weng Lai" on the white crane beam. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Yang Lei
Experts speculate that this way of writing expresses Huang Tingjian's reluctance to leave after coming to Fuling. And Huang Tingjian's true thoughts are drowned in the long river of time and space, and it is impossible to test. Later generations have explained a variety of things, but they have added a lot of good stories to Bai Heliang.
According to statistics, there are 165 inscriptions on the beam, 18 stone fish, 2 Guanyin, 1 white crane, of which 108 are inscriptions with hydrological value. In the cultural relics protection project of the Three Gorges Reservoir area of the Yangtze River, the protection of the Baiheliang inscription is the most difficult, the highest scientific and technological content, and the most investment.
In order to protect this underwater treasure, the most basic principle is not to depart from the water environment on which it depends, that is, to use the method of "in-situ conservation". Among the multiple schemes, the "non-pressurized vessel" scheme proposed by Ge Xiurun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was selected. The plan is to build a huge non-pressurized container on the original site of Baiheliang and fill the container with filtered Yangtze River water, so that the water pressure inside the container is relatively balanced with the water pressure of the Yangtze River outside. The container adopts advanced equipment and technology to precipitate and desilt the Yangtze River water to reduce the erosion of the inscription by the river water.
Inside the non-pressurized container cover of the Baiheliang Underwater Museum in Chongqing, divers are cleaning up. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Xiao
A pressure-resistant passage has been built along the Baiheliang site in the container, and the audience can view the underwater inscriptions up close through the observation window. The world's first non-diving underwater heritage museum was born.