 A building team from the Chinese People’s Armed Police won the bid for construction of the world’s largest water project in 1994. Nearly a decade of effort has created a grand Three Gorges Dam today in the upper reaches of the Yangzte River.
The Three Gorges Project is the world’s largest hydro-engineering project in terms of its scale, construction time, investment as well as the number of people involved. Consequently, to participate in its construction is both an honor and a challenge. This time, a Chinese military team took the duty. What drove them forward is the great honor, while what blocked them several times during the whole process were the great deal of difficulties.
On the day of trial navigation through the Three Gorges ship locks early this week, one of the commanders from the Armed Police Hydropower team came to the site to witness the historic moment. With great excitement and joy, he said, it is the Chinese Military personnel that dug the Three Gorges Dam out of the mountains and valleys. The whole project is to be completed by the year of 2009, and more effort will be needed to ensure the normal function of the Three Gorges Dam.
“What we are working on is the last phase of the work. That is the preparatory work of positioning the eight floating cement boats, the floating dams. A few days later, the place where we now stand will be filled with water. Then the eight cement boats will float together to form two 260-meter floating dams. Their main roles include navigation and emergency harboring. After the positioning of the floating dams is finished, the Three Gorges ship lock will formally accept shipping vessels. And this will signify that the project of the Three Gorges ship lock has been completed,” said Wu Guoru, chief engineer of Second Squad of People’s Armed Police’s Hydropower Team.
It’s taken 10 years of hard work by the People’s Armed Police to build the main part of the Three Gorges shiplock. The Three Gorges Headquarters of the People’s Armed Police was established in 1993 when the Three Gorges Project was approved by the National People’s Congress. This was the first time for a Chinese military building team to participate in a key national project through public bidding.
“The Hydropower Team of the People’s Armed Police as the country’s only military team that engages in hydraulic project construction has obligatioins to make our contribution to this project. In terms of its function and future development, we engage ourselves in water and hydropower projects construction in peace time. Our other important functioin is emergency building and emergency repair in war time. It is necessary to prepare our team through this project for possible future war time needs. The Three Gorges shiplock project is a great opportunity for the troops to rehearse so that we are capable of shouldering the more difficult tasks of maintaining our country’s stability in the future,” said Zhang Qubei, commissar of Three Gorges Headquarters of People’s Armed Police’s Hydropower Team.
During the Spring Festival of 1994, the Hydropower Headquarters of The People’s Armed Police won the bidding for the Three Gorges Project, thanks to their specific calculation and thorough preparation. The task they were assigned was the First Phase Groud Construction of the Three Gorges’ Permanent Shiplock. The task required removal of 18 hilltops, 47 percent of which consisted of marble.
“Let me give you a metaphor. Our task was to remove 18 hills around the Tanziling Mountain. From the upper reaches to the lower reaches, the total length was approximately 3,600 meters. We were to flatten the hills from an altitude of 270 meters to 150 meters. The vertical height was 135 meters and total volume was 19 million cubic meters,” said Zhang Jicang, deputy chief of Three Gorges Headquarters of People’s Armed Police’s Hydropower Team.
In winter time, it is extremely cold on the construction site. The soldiers’ hands and feet are covered with chilblains. In summer time, the construction site is as hot as a baking oven. The temperature in the driver’s compartment of the truck is over 50 degrees celcius. The soldiers had rashes all over their bodies.
“I think we are working very hard all the time. We are full of energy and enthusiam almost everyday. Many of my fellow soldiers work on the construction site no matter summer blaze or winter snow,” said a construction worker.
The hydropower team of the People’s Armed Police set a world record of digging 1.65 million cubic meters of earth and stone for the shiplock valley. They finished the first phase project eight days ahead of the schedule. Their outstanding performance not only won them high honors but also more opportunities. In 1996, the Armed Police’s Hydropower Team headquarters succeeded in their bidding for the second phase ground construction.
“The characteristic of the first phase project is its huge volume of earth and stone digging, high work intensity and the demand for speediness of its construction. The second phase construction has the same challenges as the first phase. But on top of these challenges, its main characteristic is its high technical difficulty,” said Fan Deming, former commander of Three Gorges Headquarters of People’s Armed Police’s Hydropower Team.
To finish the second phase project, we need not only hard work and perseverance but also technical innovation. According to the project design, the second phase construction is to dig four 68.5-meter high vertical walls between the middle mound and the fringe slopes. In such a way, a five-stair shiplock can be built on both the left and right side so that ships can pass the dam just like climbing up or down stairs. This is a unprecedented project. The major difficulty is to cut four vertical walls in granite mountains without damaging the remaining mountain rocks so as not to affect the security of the future shiplock.
To overcome this technical difficulty, the headquarters of the Hydropower Team of the Armed Police recruited more than 20 experts from within its own system to form a special team and invited experts from both home and abroad to work together. In half a year’s time, the team did research day and night to work out a plan that could guarantee 100 percent success.
“During the daytime, we experimented on the construction site according to the design that was worked out the previous night. In the evening, after going home, we proceeded immediately to analyse the data obtained during the daytime. Based on the experiment results from the day, we would make adjustment to the experiment design for the next day. In about half a year’s time, we did more than 50 explosion experiments and analysed tens of thousands of sets of data before we eventually confirmed the final project design,” said Wu Xiaolong, engineer of Three Gorges Headquarters, People’s Armed Police’s Hydropower Team.
Tens of thousands of explosions needed to be done to provide enough room for the establishment of the shiplock. Everybody here knew that even only one single explosion going astray could lead to the total failure of the whole project.
The whole process would not allow even one tiny mistake in each detail such as the explosive amount or timing. In order to ensure 100 percent precision, the soldiers of the Armed Police’s Hydro-power team received strict technical training. Here not only the technicians but also every participant constrcution worker had to be a master of the techniques.
Thanks to iron discipline and management, there was no single failed explosion througout the three years’ digging of the vertical walls. They used an advanced cable-fixed method to sew the mountains together so that the mountain wouldn’t collapse after being dug into two valleys. More than 20 kinds of technical workers worked in coordination to successfully set up a sluice gate that is bigger than four basketball playgrounds. Both the sluice gate’s volume and weight set new world records.
With all the difficulties being overcome one after another, the Three Gorges Shiplock construction continues to move ahead smoothly.
At the foot of the lofty Tanziling hill, works a group of soldiers, determined to move mountains. Under the blazing summer sun, in the chilly winter wind, hard rocks melt by their sweat. Never shall the great Three Gorges forget such a group of soldiers. They miss their beloved ones so, far away from the colorful outside world. Never shall the great Three Gorges forget them.
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