Makers › Engineer / Architect
Zheng Guo
Han-state hydraulic engineer sent to Qin to drain its strength with a canal project, whose irrigation channel from the Jing River turned the Guanzhong plain into farmland and bears his name
A stone arch bridge is being built across a river gorge, with wooden centering under the arch and bamboo scaffolding around the piers; many small workers haul stone blocks up a ramp with ropes and pulleys, and blocks and logs lie in the foreground below a distant city wall.
Also known as Zhan Guo Han Guo Shui Gong
- Roles
- Engineer / Architect
Zheng Guo was a water engineer from the state of Han late in the Warring States period. According to the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji), Han hoped to exhaust Qin with labour so that it could not march east, and sent him to persuade Qin to dig a great canal carrying the Jing River from the Hukou gap below Mount Zhong eastward to the Luo. Midway through the work his role as an agent was discovered and the Qin king wanted him killed, but he argued that although he had come as a spy, the finished canal would still benefit Qin. The king agreed and let him complete it. Silt-laden water from the canal reclaimed more than forty thousand qing of salty land, yields rose to about one zhong per mu, and the Guanzhong plain became rich farmland that strengthened Qin; the canal was named after him. In 2016 the Zhengguo Canal was added to the list of World Heritage Irrigation Structures.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; hydraulic engineer from Han, late Warring States