Qing Dynasty Ningxia Yellow River Irrigation Irrigation Technology Choices

During the Qing Dynasty Ningxia region had always been a place of the source of soldiers and play an important strategic position in the northwest. In that time, the regional defense consolidation and economic development in north-west was very important to the whole country's stability. Therefore, the troops and their supplies in Ningxia has been the most important thing for the country, and a lot of manpower, material and financial had been used here. Ningxia is an inland plains, drought, and the Yellow River across it from the southest to the northeast. Long before the Qin and Han Dynasty, based on the unique geographical environment people of Ningxia began the derived the Yellow River water for irrigation of farmland, and developed the agriculture of irrigation. To the early Qing Dynasty, the distribution of irrigation channels in Ningxia Plain had been a dense web and almost perfect. In Qing Dynasty, lead the water from the Yellow River to irrigate in Ningxia has a great achievement and significant impact in the history of Ningxia water conservancy development.In the early Qing Dynasty, because of the encouragement of the government and the poor situation of irrigation in Ningxia, the three channels of Great Qing, HuiNong, ChangRun had been excavated. Thus, the farmland irrigation improved and the land productivity increased, which was also conducive to the stability and development of the country border. Especially the channels of HuiNong and ChangRun made the pasture land between Helan Mountain and the Yellow River been irrigated, which changed the nomadism agricultural into irrigated agricultural. All of this obtained a large number of immigrants and their exploiture, which impelled the establishment of Xinqu County and Baofeng County.In Qing Dynasty, another achievement of irrigation works of Ningxia Yellow River Water Irrigation District is to overhaul the channel annually and frequently. Overhauling the channel annually is to check, protect, and repair the important irrigation works systematically and seasonally in the lower water period each year, which ensures that irrigation works could work as usual and guarantee the channels flowing without obstruction. Qing Dynasty paid more attention to irrigation works, investing a lot of labor power, material resources and financial resources in irrigation works, and the system of overhauling the channel annually was perfected. Most channels of Irrigation District in the whole dynasty were overhauled officially by using the money from government. Meanwhile, it obtained lots of experiences in terms of repairing the channel, irrigation and management such as installed holes, troughs and stones in the channel, summarized the method of overhauling the channel and the rule of irrigating three times.In this period, there were plenty of prominent officers to regulate rivers; they made great achievements in terms of excavating, protecting, perfecting and improvements of the irrigating system and method. There were outstanding examples such as WangQuanchen's "method of employing workers", TongZhi's "dredging the base stones", NiuTingcai's "troughs in the hole" and YangYingju's "twelve dredging codes".Facing different areas, it chose different agriculture's working styles. Ningxia Yellow River Water Irrigation District inevitably chose the agriculture's working style of irrigation depending on the Yellow River. At the same time, the development of irrigation works in Ningxia was firmly influenced by nature, economics, policies and historical traditions. On the contrary, chooses of irrigating technology put some effects on ecology. Therefore, irrigating exploitation in this district took influences towards district's economics, population, town and agriculture's working styles.