A thousand years of water levels cut into a river shoal
How a natural stone ridge in the Fuling reach of the Yangtze became a hydrological record, and how it came to be sealed inside a glass-walled shell under the reservoir.
Fuling District sits on the south-eastern edge of the Sichuan Basin where the Wu River enters the Yangtze, and the town has long been the collection point for goods moving out of the Wu basin. It is the second-largest district in Chongqing, covering 2,941.46 square kilometres with 1,115,016 residents at the 2020 census. The Yangtze crosses it east to west and the Wu runs north to south through it. Standing in the heart of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region, its best-known record is written on a stone ridge in the river: the Baihelian inscriptions, now held inside a purpose-built underwater museum.
How a natural stone ridge in the Fuling reach of the Yangtze became a hydrological record, and how it came to be sealed inside a glass-walled shell under the reservoir.