A grand water discharging ceremony was held on Sunday to celebrate the 2,260th anniversary of the completion of Dujiangyan, the oldest irrigation facility in the world, located in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The celebration, attended by over 10,000 people, including foreign diplomats, was kicked off around 10:50 a.m. with three ear-piercing gunshots, after which eight people in two groups carrying one pig and one goat threw the animals into the mainstream of the Minjiang River where the water irrigation facility is built.

After that, several young and strong workers, all in ancient Chinese costumes, jumped from the Baizhang Dam onto the sluice gate using sharp axes to cut off the bamboo ropes which tied three logs together for closing the river, and fastened a new rope to the logs, while another group of a dozen or so young men on the river bank all worked to pull the logs up.

Water immediately gushed out and flowed to irrigate the famous fertile Chengdu Plain, where the provincial capital is located.

Built on the upper reaches of the Minjiang River in 256 BC, a major tributary of China's longest Yangtze River, the Dujiangyan irrigation system, which is 50 km from Chengdu is said to be the world's oldest irrigation project still in operation.

At present, it irrigates 672,600 hectares of farmland and provides water for daily use and industrial purposes for people and enterprises in 50 large and medium-sized cities in the southwestern province.

The water irrigation facility and nearby Mount Qingcheng were placed on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2000.

(Xinhua News Agency April 5, 2004)