Chapter 40 Section 3 Karez at the Southern Foot of Tianshan Mountains

In Xinjiang, in addition to the above-mentioned open channels, there is another type of water conservancy facilities called Karez.It is a self-flowing irrigation project with groundwater as the water source, and it is the most ideal water conservancy facility on the front of the snow mountain and on the slopes with a particularly dry climate. The Turpan and Hami basins in southern Xinjiang are the most ideal areas for building Karez.They are all located at the southern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, and there are abundant snow water underground.The basin has a certain slope, and canals are dug to develop the underground snow water on the northern edge of the basin, so that artesian irrigation can be carried out.The rainfall here is extremely rare, only a few tens of millimeters throughout the year, and the climate is dry, with annual evaporation as high as several thousand millimeters. Open channel irrigation is used, and most of the channel water is evaporated, and evaporation poses little threat to Karez.

Karez, also known as well canal, is composed of several parts such as vertical shaft, hidden channel and open channel. The length of each Karez varies from one or two miles to ten or twenty miles.Underdrains are underground channels that intercept groundwater and channel it to the surface.Every 10 to 20 meters of the culvert, a vertical well is erected on it, and the depth of the well ranges from a few meters to tens of meters, depending on the depth of the aquifer.The shafts of each culvert range from a few eyes to as many as one or two hundred eyes.It is the upper and lower passages for excavators when digging and repairing culverts. It also has the functions of excavation, ventilation, and lighting. It also depends on it to determine the slope and direction of culverts.The open channel guides the groundwater drawn from the underground channel into the farmland to irrigate the crops (Figure 12).

When did the Western Regions start to build Karez?Most scholars believe that it can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty.The reason is that since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Western Han Dynasty has vigorously managed the Western Regions and stationed troops in Luntai, Quli (now Korla), Cheshi (now Turpan) and other places.Rainfall is scarce in this area, and the air is dry. Water conservancy must be built when farming, especially Karez, which is rarely threatened by evaporation.They believed that the technology of drilling Karez wells had been mastered during the construction of the Longshou Canal before the settlement of fields in the Western Regions, and the groundwater resources in Cheshi and other places were very rich, so they could develop wells and canals for irrigation in the Western Regions.

Scholars also believe that the transmission of well and canal technology to the west during the Western Han Dynasty is also vaguely visible in historical records. "Hanshu Biography of the Western Regions" records that in the second year of Yuankang Emperor Xuandi (64 BC), "Send 15,000 soldiers to Dunhuang, General Xin Wuxian of the Qiang Dynasty, send envoys to Dunhuang, and send envoys to go to the table (march map). 〕To the west of Houjing, I want to pass through the canal and turn to the valley..." Meng Kang, a man of the Three Kingdoms period, commented on Beidanhoujing, saying: Beidanhoujing, "Dajing 6 is also connected to the canal, and the spring flows out. In Bailongdui Under the Dongtu Mountain.” According to these records and explanations, scholars say that Beidanhou Well is a well canal, and Bailongdui is located in the east of Lop Nur. At that time, wells and canals could be used to increase the water volume of the canal, and of course they would also be built in the Western Regions. Wells and canals irrigate the fields.

The above reasons and basis are worthy of attention.But there are many inferences, and the basis is too thin.In the Western Han Dynasty, whether wells and ditches were used to irrigate the fields in the Western Regions depends on the discovery of underground relics and relics. Different from the Western Han Dynasty, from Wei, Jin to Sui and Tang Dynasties, the information about wells and ditches in the Western Regions gradually increased, with written records and unearthed remains. Uyghur Minup, director of the Xinjiang Water Conservancy Department, and Wang Heting, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang People's Congress, pointed out in their papers that since the founding of the People's Republic of China, a number of very old wells have been discovered when building reservoirs in some places in Xinjiang. His ruins.The remains of the ancient well and canal cited by Minufu in the article are in the Jinshengkou Reservoir area of ​​Turpan.This ancient canal is about 100 meters long and has dried up; there are seven shafts, each of which is about 10 meters apart; at the exit of the dark canal, a section has collapsed into an open channel.Along with the ruins of the ancient canal, there are also ancient pottery and ancient cities.After identification, it belongs to the cultural relics of Wei and Jin Dynasties.This ancient well canal should have a history of 1,500 to 600 years.

The ancient well and canal discussed by Wang Heting is located in the east, northwest of Lukeqin, Shanshan County.Not only three abandoned wells and ditches on the same level were found here, but also many abandoned wells and ditches under the three ancient wells and ditches.These ancient wells and canals actually destroyed a new reservoir.Wang Heting said that after the founding of the People's Republic of China, a reservoir named "Ocean" was built here.Soon after the water was stored, it was destroyed by water leakage. "After inspection, it was because there were three abandoned old Karez wells buried under the reservoir. After backfilling with a large project, the water was stored again, and a breach occurred again. The reason is that there are still many abandoned old Karez wells in the depths, which cannot be repaired." The new reservoir had to be scrapped.The article believes that the construction time of these Karez Wells is about 1,000 years or more, which is around the time of the Tang Dynasty.

In the Tang Dynasty, there were already wells and canals in Turpan, which can be seen not only in the relics, but also in the first-hand documents - "Documents Unearthed in Turpan".For example, in the inscriptions about land property unearthed from the Tang tomb in Astana, Gaochang County, the names of Jingqu and Humajingqu were mentioned more than once.Among them, the scale of "" seems to be not small, and it can irrigate the farmland in the north and west of Gaochang City (Figure 13).

In the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties, there are few materials about wells and canals in Xinjiang, especially the Song and Yuan dynasties.As for the Ming Dynasty, a batch was discovered during the census in the 1980s.Taking Turpan City, which has the most karez in Xinjiang, as an example, among the 445 old and new karez, there are more than 10 with a history of 350-500 years.It should be said that they were all built in the Ming Dynasty. The water conservancy construction in Xinjiang in the Qing Dynasty was very successful, whether it was ordinary irrigation canals or Karez wells.Especially in the late Qing Dynasty, due to the efforts of Lin Zexu, Zuo Zongtang and others, it developed rapidly.

As mentioned above, when Lin Zexu was exiled from far away and returned to Xinjiang, he was ordered by General Buyantai of Yili to jointly build water conservancy in southern Xinjiang with Quan Qing, the minister in charge of Karashar.In addition to building many open channels there, they also vigorously expanded the Karez project from Turpan to Toksun, Ilarik and other places.Later, although Lin Zexu was transferred back to the mainland by the Qing government, the work he started to expand Karez still received the attention and support of the new Yili General Sa Ying'a, and finally the official Kaner in the Turpan Basin was changed from the original more than 30, Increased to more than 100, and made Toksun, like Turpan, a relatively dense area of ​​Karez.Driven by the construction of official kans, folks have also built such projects one after another.By the early 1860s, there were more than 800 official and civilian Kankans in Turpan and Toksun, and more than 300 in Shanshan.

The second major development of Karez in Huijiang was after Zuo Zongtang crushed the invasion of Aguba in 1878.Since Zuo regarded the recovery and development of water conservancy in Huijiang as one of the important contents of the aftermath work, in just three years, when he was transferred from Huijiang in 1881, he had already achieved remarkable results. In addition to the Guankan in Turpan, 185 new Guankans were built in other places, such as Lianmuqin (east of the Turpan Basin) and Shanshan.At that time, the enthusiasm of the people to rebuild Minkan was also very high. Ten years later, on the Turpan Basin to the west of Lianmuqin, thousands of Kaner were built.

Although the development of Karez in Xinjiang in the Qing Dynasty was related to the promotion of a group of officials such as Lin Zexu and Zuo Zongtang, it was more mainly the result of the hard work of the local Uyghur, Han, Hui and other people.Among them, the Uyghurs have made great contributions. It can be said that most of the karez were drilled by them. Not only that, the researchers believe that one of the important structures of the Karez Well Project, the Lao Dam, was also created by the Uyghur people.Ancient wells and ditches are mainly composed of three parts: underground canals, shafts, and open canals.The Uyghurs developed the structure of the Karez well and added a "waterlogging dam".Laoba is a Uighur language, and its meaning is equivalent to the water storage pond in Chinese.Waterlogged dams play an important role.One is water storage.It is located at the outlet of the culvert and stores the water that flows from the culvert in winter.The temperature in Xinjiang is too low in winter, and agricultural production has stopped, but Karez wells continue to produce water.Waterlogged dams can store winter water for use in the coming spring.The second is to dry the water.The main source of groundwater here is snowmelt, and the temperature of the water is very low. If it is brought out from the underground canal, and the farmland is immediately irrigated through the open canal, the low temperature will seriously affect the growth of crops.The extracted water can only be beneficial to crop growth if it is first stored in the waterlogging dam and then irrigated the farmland after being dried.The third is to facilitate the unified allocation of farmland water.The creation of the flood dam has made the Karez well project more complete. At present, there are more than 1,000 Karez wells in the Turpan and Hami basins, and the total length of the culverts is about 5,000 kilometers, comparable to the Great Wall and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in history.

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