1939 Dujiangyan Opening of the Waters

Item

Title
1939 Dujiangyan Opening of the Waters
Description
Ralph Outerbridge's photographs of the annual Opening of the Waters ceremony on April 7th, 1939. He was attending along with other new missionaries in the Missionary Training School.
Commentary
Annually on the Qingming Festival Day (Tomb or Grave Sweeping Day) the Opening of the Waters Ceremony has been taking place for over 2,000 years. The date usually falls in the first week of April when hundreds of people gather at the famous Dujiangyan waterworks. The event is organized by the priests of the Fulong Temple at Dujiangyan, along with the Dujiangyan City government officials. For the same length of time, these waterworks have ensured water transportation for warfare and commerce, prevented the devastating annual spring flooding, and provided irrigation throughout the Chengdu Plain.

During the 1930s, Jesse Moncrieff of the American Baptist Mission was in charge of The Missionary Training School on the West China Union University campus. New missionaries attended this school for at least one year while they were in intensive language training. The school also sponsored excursions to cultural sites and events. This was how the Stockwell’s and Outerbridge’s were first introduced to this extraordinary site, which has been a designated World Heritage Site since 2000.

The group of images in this Event Record includes photographs taken by Ralph Outerbridge in 1939. Esther Beck Stockwell described her visit in 1937 as follows:

“One day [Jesse Moncrieff] arranged for all the students to go in trucks to Guan Xian, for the opening of the waters festival. It was magnificent. The ceremony commemorates the fact that more than two thousand years ago an enlightened official [named Li Bing] designed a massive engineering feat of irrigation controls for the provincial water system through a series of channels and dikes… Because of this long traditional practice, the plains around Chengdu have remained fertile and have never been subject to floods that plagues other parts of China.

“Hundreds of people came to the ceremony that was held in the Guan Xian temple [the Fulong Temple today]. People also lined the river banks to watch the dam being opened and the spring waters gush out of the mountains to enter the wide-spreading irrigation system.”
Location
Dujiangyan, Sichuan
https://www.geonames.org/1809831/dujiangyan.html
Fulong Temple, Dujiangyan, Sichuan
https://www.geonames.org/13060424/fulong-temple.html
Erwang Temple, Dujiangyan, Sichuan
https://www.geonames.org/12500587/erwang-temple.html
Event Date
1939-04-07
References
John Munro. 1990. Beyond the Moon Gate: A China Odyssey, 1938-1950, Adapted from the Diaries of Margaret Outerbridge. Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, pp. 30-31.
Esther Beck Stockwell. 1980. Asia's Call. San Francisco: Stockwell Press, pp.86-87.
Asia's Call (online)
Item sets
Outerbridge Family Archives
Event Records in China Middle Kingdom Digital Resource
Media
220px-Dujiangyan.png

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