Xi'an to drown out the competition with 28 manmade lakes
Xi'an boasts rich historic and cultural resources as the capital of 13 dynasties during the long era of imperial China. These include the Terracotta Army of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor to unify China, as well as many and other historical monuments.
The ancient city is now the most prosperous metropolis in China's central-northwest region, with a population of more than eight million and 45 million tourists visiting the city each year.
However, Xi'an still faces an acute shortage of water resources. The per capita share of water resources for residents is only a third that of the province and one sixth that of the whole country, according to Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post.
Xi'an, formerly known as Chang'an, used to have rich water resources when it served as the national political, economic and cultural center, surrounded by eight rivers and numerous streams and lakes.
Emperor Han Wu (157-87 BCE) of the Han Dynasty built the Kunming lake, patterned after the famous Dian Lake in southern Yunnan, to increase the local water supply and train his navy. It was the first and the largest manmade lake in China. But after about 1,000 years the lake dried up in the late Tang Dynasty and has now become farmland.
Severe water shortages and continuing economic development have forced Xi'an to increase its reliance on undergro! und water, which has sunk the ground slightly under the city in certain areas, such as under the now slanted Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, believed to be built 1,300 years ago.
Officials conceded that the water shortage problem arises mainly from inefficient storage and supply management as more than two billion cubic meters of water from the Qinling Mountains on the south side of the city pass through the area each year, while the city's total water demand stands at less than 600 million cubic meters per year.
After extensive planning, the city and provincial governments will attempt to bring another manmade lake back to life on the southwest side of the city, reviving with it the lost name of Kunming Lake. The new lake will have the same 10.4 square kilometers of water surface area as its predecessor from antiquity, which is twice the size of the West Lake in Hangzhou.
In addition to helping store water, the lake will become a new tourism and recreational center. Property developers will help establish four new satellite and ecological townships with different styles to accommodate a total population of 600,000 residents when the project is completed by 2020.
In more recent years, Xi'an has completed construction of 13 manmade lakes, including restoring some old ones with reconstruction work. New capital investment of more than 10 billion yuan (US$ 1.57 billion) will be made to build 15 more lakes in the next five to 10 years to increase the total to 28 lakes with a combined area of 30 square kilometers.
Kunming will be the largest, according to the city's water bureau.
There will be 10 river systems and five water-diversion projects to link up all of the 28 artificial lakes for flowing water into a positively gigantic water supply network for the big city. In addition, seven areas of wetland will be created to support the network and help improve the quality of the water.
The water conservancy projects will be jointly funded by the government and investme! nt by com! panies in the private sector that will take part in the development of the water and land resources related to the city.
Some water conservancy experts said the whole project is bigger than they had suggested. But the project will help Xi'an move closer toward its goal of developing into an international city with a total investment of 3 trillion yuan (US$ 472 billion) in a decade, they said.
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