The most 'arrogant' project in the country, it has flattened 1,250 hills in 10 years, which can be called a miracle in the world
There are various wonders in the world, like the internationally recognized Seven Wonders, the Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus in Olympia, the Mausoleum of Moses, Rhodes Island The Colossus of the Sun God and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.
But there are many sayings about the eighth wonder, such as the Taj Mahal in India, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Colosseum in Italy, as well as the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Mausoleum in China, the Great Wall of China and the Red Flag Canal in Linzhou, China.
There are many buildings like this kind of miracle, but they are all used for mausoleums, beliefs, and military affairs. Only the Red Flag Canal in Linzhou in China was built for the people of a city to survive. Now many people have witnessed it with their own eyes. The eighth wonder created by hand.
Linzhou, a city that is not very famous in China, does not have good mountains and rivers, and does not have an excellent cultural heritage. When opening the county annals of Linzhou, the most common words you see are drought, severe drought, and continuous drought. Drought has always accompanied Linzhou. In the records from the Ming Dynasty to the new China, Linzhou experienced more than 30 failures of harvest due to drought, and there were often human tragedies of changing children and eating.
In Linzhou, because of its geographical location, it can be said that "water is as expensive as oil". Linzhou is surrounded by Taihang Mountains on all sides and is located in the earthquake zone of North China. There are no major rivers flowing through it, and the annual rainwater cannot be hoarded due to the underground limestone. Year-round draught, farming can only see God's wink. For a day's draft, it is necessary to go to a place more than ten kilometers away to fetch water.
In the ninth year of the Republic of China, the sky was still dark on the morning of New Year's Eve. An old man surnamed Sang in Sang'er Village, Rencun Town, got up in the dark before five o'clock as usual. of water.
This year is another year of severe drought. More than 300 households nearby rely on Huangquan Cliff to live. However, the flowing water of Huangquan Cliff is also intermittent, and it takes several hours to fill a bucket of water. After lining up for a day, I finally filled two buckets of water when it was getting dark.
Old man Sang couldn't take care of his hungry stomach without eating for a day, and happily hurried home with two buckets of water. When I arrived at the gate of the village, I saw my daughter-in-law, who had just passed the gate, greeted me at the gate of the village.
Seeing that the old man Sang was sweating profusely after a busy day, the sensible daughter-in-law quickly took over the burden from her father-in-law. But no one thought that because it was dark, the daughter-in-law had just walked a few steps while carrying the burden, and tripped over a stone, spilling the two buckets of water. The old man Sang and his daughter-in-law were all blinded.
After returning home with two empty buckets, the daughter-in-law didn't say a word, but silently got into the kitchen to cook the New Year's Eve dinner for the whole family. Because the daughter-in-law was ashamed, she didn't come to the table to eat, and she committed suicide that night. . The whole family was very sad. On the first day of the new year, after the burial of his daughter-in-law, the old man Sang led the whole family to flee to Shanxi.
A bucket of water can kill a person or destroy a happy family. This is the true portrayal of Lin County at that time .
In 1944, after the liberation of Lin County, the government also built some water conservancy projects to solve the water shortage, but it was still a drop in the bucket for the vast area.
Three consecutive years of severe natural disasters starting in 1959 made Lin County even worse, not only unable to farm normally, but also unable to guarantee daily drinking water. The villagers finally brought some water back, but they did not dare to use it indiscriminately.
Without understanding the problem of water shortage, Lin County will never have a bright future. In order to prevent future generations from living such a water-deficient and water-less day, the Lin County Government has decided to drive the people of the whole county to lead Zhang into the forest and split mountains and open ditches!
On February 10, 1960, the Lin County Government officially convened a county-wide mobilization meeting, adopting a voluntary registration method. In principle, young and middle-aged people in good health can apply. However, when the construction officially started on the second day, it was found that nearly 30,000 people came to the site, and many of them participated in the construction without reporting their age.
As we all know, from 1959 to 1961, during the three years of natural disasters, there was a shortage of food across the country, and every household lived a life of starvation, not to mention Lin County, which suffered from severe drought for many years. No money, no food, no talent, no tools, no technology, it's easier said than done if you want to open a canal?
Most of the people of that generation have survived hard times. Without food, the people of the county dig wild vegetables, peel off tree bark, eat mulberry leaves, shrink their clothes, and distribute the coarse grains they save to those who participated in the construction; without tools, every household carries agricultural iron such as shovels, hoes, pickaxes, etc. If there are not enough carts, people will cut rattan and weave them into baskets to carry stones; without cement, the people of Linxian think about making cement by themselves, but if the mountain cannot be blasted, they mix ammonium nitrate fertilizer and sawdust to make soil gunpowder.
Without food, tools, cement, and gunpowder, these problems can be solved, but without money, technology, and talents, how can these be solved?
At that time, the initial budget for the construction of the Hongqi Canal was about 70 million yuan, but the capital reserve of the entire Lin County was only 3 million yuan and 30 million catties of grain. Grain is the life of the people of the county, of course it cannot be sold, but how to make up for the huge funding gap?
Fundraising in the province and the society can’t help too much. After all, there is more than one Lin County in Henan Province. If you want to make up the funding gap, the people of Lin County know that you have to rely on yourself! Under the deliberation of the leadership team of Lin County, it was decided to take advantage of Lin County's large labor force, set up an engineering team to go out to undertake the project, and use the money earned to subsidize the Hongqi Canal Project. According to statistics, in 1961 alone, Lin County organized 31,000 people to go out to work, with a total annual income of 18 million yuan. This money has largely relieved the financial pressure in the construction of the Hongqi Canal project.
Of course, the biggest and most critical issue in the process of building the Red Flag Canal is the issue of talent and technology. Judging from the cultural level of the country at that time, there were not many people in the country who could read and write, let alone the technicians who knew how to repair water conservancy. At that time, there were only 28 water conservancy technicians in the entire Lin County, and the highest education was only secondary school.
According to the plan, in order to achieve the expected effect of "leading Zhang into the forest", the altitude difference of every 8 kilometers cannot exceed 1 meter, which has high requirements for the measurement of mountain slope and the accuracy of the drop value. In the case of precision measuring instruments, people made the ancient level "Teal Duck" for measurement, and the final accuracy was actually the same.
Day after day, year after year, the vast Taihang Mountains surround Lin County on all sides. And the people of Lin County, with their true spirit of "The Foolish Old Man Moves the Mountains", took a full 10 years to finally complete this huge project - the Red Flag Canal.
In the past 10 years, more than 500,000 people in Linxian County, in addition to the old, the weak, the sick and the disabled, 300,000 people participated in the canal repair project. Every day, 100,000 people fought on the construction site. A total of 256 people were seriously injured and 81 people died, the smallest. Only 17 years old, the oldest is 63 years old!
In the past 10 years, Lin County raised 20.9949 million yuan of self-raised funds and materials, and the state allocated 10.2598 million yuan successively, 37.4017 million workers were employed to repair the canal, and the labor cost was 37.4017 million yuan. The average labor cost per worker is only 1 yuan!
In the past 10 years, the people of Lin County have eaten wild vegetables, lifted sledgehammers, lifted stones, leveled 1,250 hills, dug 211 tunnels, erected 151 canals, and built a total canal length of 1,525.6 kilometers!