214 



INDIANA UNIVERSITY STUDIES 



Control of Floods in China, Japan, and Korea 



The following- discussion is based upon F. H. King's 'Farmers 

 of Forty Centuries.' 



The people of China, Japan, and Korea are farming land that 

 has been in service almost 4,000 years and there ai'e only two acres 

 per capita, half of which is unf amiable. The question of sufficient 

 room for the masses of the peo])le has been a serious proposition 

 for over 4,000 years. 0^"er 4,100 years ago, Emperor Yao appointed 

 ^The Great Yu,' 'Superintendent of Works,' and entrusted him 

 with the work of draining off the waters of the disastrous floods 

 -and of canalizing the rivers. He worked at this for thirteen years, 

 after which he was called to be Emperor. This man saw the need 

 of some definite line of procedure for the conservation of the vast 

 amount of sediment that was yearly being lost by the great rivers, 

 Howang Ho, Yangste Kiang, and the Canton. He realized that 

 the flood Avaters should l.^e shut off from the precious farm land. 

 As a result this man started a system of canals to be filled with 

 the flood waters, which form today a network of water ways, all 

 over the delta region. A conservati\e estimate would place the 

 number of miles of canals and leveed rivers in China, Japan and 

 Korea at 200,000 in all. That is, forty canals across the United 

 States from east to west, and sixty from north to south would not 

 ^qual in number of miles those of the three countries today. King 

 goes on to say that this estimate is possibly not too large for China 

 -alone. 



These canals are about eiglit feet below the level of the sur- 

 rounding fields and are about twenty feet in width. In times of 

 high water these canals are permitted to fill up and when the water 

 in the main stream goes down the water is drawn from the canals. 

 While the water stands in the canals the sediment is deposited in 

 the bottom and after the canals are drained this sediment is car- 

 ried by hand and spread over the surrounding fields. This not 

 only enriches the fields but builds them up a little higher each 

 time, getting them a little farther from the danger of following 

 floods. As much as an inch of this mud is spread over the fields at 

 a time. This transfer of mud is done by human labor altogether. 



To quote from King's, 'Farmers of Forty Centuries.' concern- 

 ing other processes in conjunction with the canals: 'As adjuncts 

 to these vast canalization works there ha\ e been enormous amounts 

 of embankment, dike and levee construction. . . . Along the 

 banks of the Yangtse, and for many miles along the Hoang Ho, 



