SānWú shuǐlì lù 三吳水利錄
Records of the Hydraulic Works of the Three Wú by 歸有光 (Guī Yǒuguāng, 1506–1571) — zhuàn 撰
About the work
A 4-juan late-Míng monograph on Tàihú-basin hydraulic engineering — the principal late-Míng counter-tradition to Shàn È’s Wúzhōng shuǐlì shū (KR2k0061). The thesis: rather than addressing the Tàihú by upstream weir-closure and source-redirection (Shàn È’s program), one should concentrate effort on dredging the Sōngjiāng outlet — the principal eastern drainage of the Tàihú — and let the entire lake discharge through it to the sea. The SānWú of the title comprises Sūzhōu, Sōngjiāng, and Chángzhōu prefectures — the three Wú prefectures of the lower Tàihú basin. The work assembles seven authoritative pre-Míng essays on the subject, with two supplementary essays of Guī’s own (Shuǐlì lùn 水利論 in two parts), and a Sānjiāng tú 三江圖 appended.
Tiyao
We respectfully note: this is the work of Guī Yǒuguāng 歸有光 of the Míng. Yǒuguāng has the Yìjīng yuānzhǐ, already catalogued. The book’s main thrust: in managing the waters of Wú, one ought to put concentrated effort on the Sōngjiāng. Once Sōngjiāng is managed, the waters of Tàihú flow east, and the other waters require no exhausting of secondary effort.
In his own time, levées and embankments were derelict and broken; tide-borne sand had risen almost to the elevation of the cliffs; flood and drought both suffered the resulting calamity. He therefore selected the seven best of the prior authors’ essays on water-management, and himself composed two essays on hydraulic management to elucidate. He also appended the Sānjiāng tú (Map of the Three Rivers).
The Sōngjiāng is the tail-flow of the Zhènzé (Tàihú); the waters of the entire lake all dispatch from there to the sea. As the saying goes: “block it, and the six prefectures equally suffer the harm; clear it, and the six prefectures equally enjoy the benefit.” Earlier authors had set this out in detail.
Tracing back the cause of the silting-up: Zhāng Bì 張弼’s Shuǐyì says: since Xià Yuánjí dredged the Fànjiābāng to connect directly with the Huángpǔ, the Pǔ runs swift and overflowing, discharging more directly — while the river-tide is slow, easily depositing silt. Hence the Huángpǔ has gradually doubled in width over the old; the Wúsōng at its narrow points is hardly more than a ditch. This is the most reasonable account.
Yǒuguāng explains it instead generally as the cause of dyked-and-walled lake-fields, not without failing to investigate the matter in detail. However, Yǒuguāng resided at Āntíng, just above the Sōngjiāng; hence on the topography and the network of channels his account is most clear. What he says — that one should dredge what has silted up, and not seek out other routes — strikes the very point. Those who speak of SūzhōuSōngjiāng hydraulics — this book is no place not to have on hand for examination.
Abstract
The SānWú shuǐlì lù is the principal late-Míng theoretical statement of the “downstream-outlet” school of Tàihú-basin hydraulic policy. Its author Guī Yǒuguāng (1506–1571, CBDB id 34733), one of the major prose stylists of the Jiājìng era and a lifelong resident of Āntíng on the Sōngjiāng, drew on direct topographical knowledge to argue that the Tàihú’s drainage problem could be resolved by dredging the Sōngjiāng outlet — the natural eastern discharge channel of the lake. The position is the foil for Shàn È’s upstream-redirection thesis (KR2k0061); the Sìkù tíyào explicitly contrasts the two and takes a synthetic position. CBDB id 34733 confirms 1506–1571 (JiājìngLóngqìng era).
The Sìkù tíyào identifies the principal weakness of Guī’s argument: he attributed the silting of the Sōngjiāng outlet generally to wéitián 圍田 (embanked fields), whereas Zhāng Bì 張弼’s earlier and more accurate analysis traced the silting specifically to Xià Yuánjí 夏原吉’s Yǒng-lè-era diversion of the Sōngjiāng tail-flow into the Huángpǔ — increasing the Huángpǔ’s discharge and reducing the Sōngjiāng’s flow, with consequent silt-deposition at the outlet. The text is preserved in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (vol. 576.7).
Translations and research
No English translation. Cited in: Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants (Yale, 2004); Anne Osborne, “Highlands and Lowlands,” in Sediments of Time (Cambridge, 1998); for Guī Yǒu-guāng’s prose see Andrew H. Plaks, “Guī Yǒu-guāng,” in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature vol. 2 (2010). Standard Chinese reference: Yáo Hàn-yuán, Zhōngguó shuǐlì shǐ (1987); Wáng Yī, Tàihú liú-yù shuǐlì shǐ (Hé-hǎi dàxué, 1992).
Other points of interest
The work is a representative monument of the late-Míng literati-engineer tradition: a lifelong scholar of the Cuōjīng school, Guī Yǒuguāng applied his prose-stylistic and kǎogé skills to the technical literature of his native Sūzhōu hydraulic system. The Sānjiāng tú appended to the work is one of the earliest surviving Míng-era cartographic representations of the lower Yangtze drainage.