The night before I visited Dujiangyan, I had dinner with an Australian girl that I met earlier that day. She planned to go horseback riding in Songpan, a four-day trek. “I’m going to visit an irrigation system tomorrow” is what I told her. “It’s an ancient one”, I added. But I already lost her interest. Sometimes it’s hard to explain being a WHS traveller. I really did look forward to visiting this site though, wondering what would be there to see. And I don’t like horses anyway.

The next day I took a public bus to Dujiangyan, a city about 60 km northwest of Chengdu. At the city entrance, there’s a most amazing sight: a huge rock (measuring at least 150 x 30 meters) with a golden horse statue on top, and a sign “Top Tourist City of China”. Well, for sure I wouldn’t be the odd visitor here. Direct tourist buses to Mount Qincheng are available from the city's modern main bus station, but I opted for city bus #4 to the irrigation system.

Anticipating this visit I had had visions of muddy fields, me being the only visitor trying to find my way and pick up at least some of the story. The entrance to the Dujiangyan Irrigation System however looked like one for a theme park. A well-signposted hiking route leads you through the park and its main sights. It’s quite a walk, but you can also hop on one of the golf carts that shuttle passengers. The site even has signs in German! Although I must say that the explanations lost a lot of depth in the multiple translations, 10 sentences in English usually resulted in 3 German sentences.

It’s rather difficult to make a water management site attractive to a non-specialist visitor. The Chinese have made the most of it by including a park with a water theme, large explanation signs at the points of interest and maintaining some shrines dedicated to the victims of the floodings and to Erlang Shen, a Chinese god with a third true-seeing eye in the middle of his forehead who helped Li Bing with his work. Highlights for me were the Erwang temple and the Anlan Suspension Bridge.

P.S. November 2007: I did visit the other half of this WHS (Mount Qingcheng) at the end of my trip around China. I focussed more on its natural features than on the Taoist heritage. See my review of the Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries for that.