FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron expressed gratitude for the hospitality he received during his three-day state visit to China on his social media accounts on Saturday. He praised Dujiangyan in Sichuan’s capital city Chengdu as a “2,000-year-old marvel that tames water and irrigates Sichuan.”

The Dujiangyan irrigation system, characterized by dam-free water diversion, was built in 256 B.C. and is the oldest, the only remaining grand water conservancy project in the world, which has withstood the tests of natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes, and is still in use today.

A “fish-mouth” shaped weir splits the Minjiang River into an inner channel for irrigation and an outer channel for discharge of flood water.

It was listed as a World Cultural Heritage by the United Nations in November 2000, and was listed as a World Irrigation Engineering Heritage in August 2018.

(Xinhua)