Li Bing

Also known as Chuan Zhu

Li Bing was the Qin governor of Shu in the late Warring States period, and little else is recorded of him: the Huayang guozhi says King Xiaowen of Qin appointed him, while Ying Shao's Fengsu tongyi places him under King Zhaoxiang. The Treatise on Rivers and Canals in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) says he cut through the Lidui spur, removed the danger of the Mo River and opened two channels through Chengdu that carried boats and watered fields. The Huayang guozhi adds that he set up five stone rhinoceroses to subdue the water spirits and stone figures in the stream as gauges, so that Shu mastered flood and drought and was called heaven's storehouse. The names now used for the Dujiangyan works, such as Fish Mouth and Precious Bottle Neck, are later, and the system was rebuilt many times. In 1974 a stone statue of Li Bing carved in 168 was recovered from the riverbed there, and later generations worshipped him as Chuanzhu, lord of Sichuan.