A 2026 account of the Qian Gorlos irrigation district describes two problems at once: seven main drainage channels could not clear more than 3,000 hectares of waterlogged ground at Lotus Pao, while more than 8,000 hectares north of the Qian-Gan highway were reported idle and salt-affected soils covered 33 percent of the district. The same report records 20,790 hectares of saline land in 1955 and 2,733 hectares in 1985. It links the district’s change to water access and reclamation; the figures do not isolate the canal as the sole cause.
From the journal
How the Yinsong Canal Reworked Lake and Farmland
Trace the Yinsong canal from the drainage and salinity problems of the Qian Gorlos irrigation district to its continuing role in fields, wetlands and water management.
In the same city · Songyuan ↗Before the canal, water could be both scarce and trapped
Eight years of work cut a route from river to lake
Construction began in September 1976 and ended in 1984. A 2025 Jilin project account describes a 53.85-kilometre canal using an approximately eight-metre natural fall, without pumping stations. Its reported cross-section is about 50 metres wide at the bottom and 80 metres at the top.
The same engineering report counts roughly 80,000 local workers and 12.26 million cubic metres of earthworks carried out by hand. The dimensions make the design legible: a broad channel was cut across the plain so a small natural gradient could carry water from the Songhua toward Chagan Lake.
A 2026 anniversary account names county official Fu Haikuan as part of the team that chose the project and recalls his habit of carrying a shovel from worksite to worksite; local people called him the “Iron Shovel Secretary.”
The diverted water reaches both fields and lakes
A 2026 Qian Gorlos district report says its irrigation system serves 450,000 mu of rice fields, of which 270,000 mu directly benefit from the Yinsong project. It also describes gradual ecological replenishment to Chagan Lake and Xinmiao Pao at 15–20 cubic metres per second. These are reported uses of a managed network that connects farm distribution with lake supply. The same report lists plans to line more than 50 channels over 115 kilometres, rebuild more than 200 structures and add digital water-level monitoring; these items are planned upgrades, not completed works. A rice grower quoted in the same anniversary report contrasted an earlier yield of 300–400 jin per mu with 1,500–1,600 jin after Songhua irrigation; this is one farmer’s reported comparison, not a districtwide measure.