IRRIGATION IN CHINA. 821 



IRRIGATION IN CHINA.* 



By GENEEAL TCHENG KI TONG. 



I PURPOSE to describe what has been accomplished in utiliz- 

 ing the natural waters in our country, where for four thousand 

 years we have sought to get all we could out of them. By means 

 of economical utilization our lands, notwithstanding the extraor- 

 dinary multiplication of our people, have furnished us ample 

 supplies of food. One of our proverbs says, u Always have chil- 

 dren ; Providence, which brings them to light, will not let them 

 die of hunger." You never see insects, creatures of nature as we 

 are, dying of hunger ; why should men suffer more from it than 

 these little ones ? Every one, therefore, ought to find support on 

 the ground he lives upon ; but to do this we must take advantage 

 of all the circumstances. If the ground is not sufficient for our 

 wants, we should add to it the fruitfnlness of water, subjected to 

 our use. While the Western people have done much to utilize 

 water wherever it seems available, there are, to my view, many 

 defects in their management. I believe water is made to be used 

 everywhere, and yet, notwithstanding the progress of science, this 

 rule is not always conformed to in the West. With all their engi- 

 neering works, well-water fails in the large cities, and that from 

 the rivers has to be used. It is impure, and consequently un- 

 wholesome. In China, where we have had the same difficulty to 

 contend with, we applied the remedy long ago by always boiling 

 such water previous to using it — applying the anti-microbic 

 remedy before the existence of microbes had been scientifically 

 determined. 



The efforts of our ancestors to subject the waters to their use 

 date from an enormous antiquity ; I have documents that show 

 how this was done forty centuries ago. Notwithstanding the nu- 

 merous modern inventions to facilitate the labor and manipula- 

 tion, we have resolved the most difficult problems in such a manner 

 that nothing can be shown to this day that surpasses what has 

 been accomplished among us by the most primitive methods. By 

 virtue of our system of irrigation our fields give us three crops a 

 year without asking for any intervals of rest. Our liberally 

 watered land is like a peasant woman ignorant of the refine- 

 ments and weariness of the society woman, whose children fol- 

 low one after another in the regular order of nature. This com- 

 parison may seem a little vague ; but in China we believe that 

 the sky is masculine and the earth feminine ; that the one acts 

 and the other produces ; and that all fertility is the result of the 



* An address, delivered July 26, 1889, before the Congress for the Utilization of Waters. 



