By Lincoln G. Peters
Sichuan, China, April 9, 2025 – The 2025 Dujiangyan Water-Releasing Festival celebrated in China, Sichuan Province, has offloaded sustainable irrigation system to Africa to address food insecurity, agriculture productivity and flood control.
The 2025 Dujiangyan water-releasing festival was celebrated in Dujiangyan in Southwest China’s Sichuan province, attracting thousands of guests and tourists from home and abroad.
This festival features consumption promotion activities alongside cultural and tourism displays and performances.
During the event, visitors experienced intangible cultural heritage skills and purchase characteristic products from eight cities in the Dujiangyan Irrigation System’s service areas.
The Dujiangyan Water-Releasing Festival was listed among the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage items in 2006. Local authorities are applying to have the festival added to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List.
The Dujiangyan water system is an ancient irrigation system in Dujiangyan City, Sichuan, China, originally constructed around 256 BC by the State of Quin as an irrigation and flood control project; it is still in use today.
Begun over 2,250 years ago, the system now irrigates 668,700 hectares of farmland. The Dujiangyan is collectively known as the “three great hydraulic engineering projects of the Qin”. Dujiangyan Irrigation System was inscribed on the world Heritage list in 2000. It has also been declared a State Priority Protected Site, among the first batch of National Scenic Areas and Historical Sites, and a National ISO14000 Demonstration Area.
In remarks at the pre-celebration of the Water-releasing festival, Mr. Jiang Weiwei, Deputy Secretary of CPC Dujiangyan Municipal Party Committee expressed appreciation and gratitude to the CIPCC journalist for coming to see the beauty of Chengdu and participate in the water-releasing festival.
According to him, the Dujiangyan irrigation system has helped the province, thereby making the place an attractive zone for tourists, and vital land of abundance in agriculture productivity and flood control.
Providing a brief historical background about the event, Mr. Jiang said that the annual event is a thousand-year-old tradition commemorating Li Bing, governor of the Shu state (ancient name for Sichuan) during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), who initiated the construction of the Dujiangyan Irrigation System in 256 BC.
Accordingly, he added that the irrigation system, is one of the world’s oldest still-operational water-control projects, protects the Chengdu Plain from floods and droughts, earning it the reputation as a “land of abundance”. Today, it irrigates about 770,000 hectares of farmland across eight cities and 41 county-level regions in the province. Editing by Jonathan Browne
