Beijing Water Oral History SerieS
My Home and Water: A people’s Account
Magic Water Village of
Mentougou District
By Wang Jian and A.H.
Translation by Madeleine Ross and Fang Li
Below is the fifth in a series of oral histories about Beijing water, as told to Wang Jian and A.H. by 52-
year-old Tan Julin of Lingshui Cun (Magic Water Village) in Mentougou District. Mentougou is 70
kilometres due west of downtown Beijing.
Tan Julin (male, 52 years old)
O
ur village, Magic Water Village, is right
next to a mountain, which doesn’t belong
to any of the surrounding mountain
ranges, so we call it Solitary Mountain or
Dushan. Looking down from a plane, it looks
similar to a lotus petal, so we also call it Lotus
Flower Mountain or Lianhua Shan. It is made
of really hard rock, quite unlike limestone and
because it has never weathered over the years,
the mountain is called “Inspired Volcanic Rock.”
How this rock could be put to use in the future,
no one knows yet.
In the past there were interconnected ponds all
over the village and 72 wells, so the village was
also called “Seventy-Two Wells.” Water flowed
year round in the two creeks that ran through
the village. You might ask where all this water
came from. Well, it was from the mountain, as
water gurgled down the mountain all year long.
In the past, when there was a lot of rain, all the
surface water collected in places where there
were channels.
There also used to be big trees on the mountain,
but later because of drought, they all died for
lack of water.
About 300 households or 1200 people live in
the village, on about 20,000 mu (1 mu = 1/15
hectares) of mountainous land. The 72 wells
meant that there were enough of them for three
or four households to share one between them.
Some wells were very shallow and you could just
scoop up the water with a bucket on the end of
your carrying pole. For others you had to use a
winch and lower a bucket down by winding the
handle, then wind the water up. It depended on
the lie of the land whether or not a well needed
a winch or not. What about the wells these days?
A water exploration team came and said that if
you dug down to the aquifer here, you’d have to
go 1,800 metres. But if the base were limestone,
you’d only need to go 800 metres to get to water.
Right here there used to be a spring, and when
I was young (in 1965) we’d water the horses at
it. The mouth of it wasn’t very deep, and we
used stones to build a sort of square box. When
 Magic Water Village of Mentougou District | Beijing Water Oral History No. 5 | July 2008
we wanted water, we just had to dip the buckets
in – the surface of the water was only about 10
centimetres from the bottom, but once we had
scooped out all the water, we only had to wait a
little while and it came up again. No matter how
dry the weather had been, the water in the spring
was always at the same level and you’d never see
it overflowing, even in heavy rain.
In this area here there used to be an octagonal
pool, built in the time of the Qing Dynasty. In
those days it was enclosed by a wooden railing,
so people could enjoy looking at it. You can see
that the hole in this stone was made for a railing.
The pool filled with water from that spring over
there, which kept flowing throughout the year.
There were a lot of geniuses in our village,
and many candidates were successful in the
imperial examinations of the past (according
to the records there were 22 of them). The
octagonal pool was part of the residence
of candidate Liu who was successful in the
provincial examinations at the time. His estate
had five courtyards, and the outer wall was built
to keep the water out. Later, when agrarian
reform (tugai) took place, his estate was given
to the people, and twenty or more households
started living in it. The residents divided the
estate up into a number of smaller compounds,
and it changed so much that you wouldn’t have
recognized what it originally looked like. The
small lane we are walking along now used to be
the river bed, and when the water was in flow, it
gurgled down from over there.
In our village, it’s those men of letters, not
local officials such as the village head or party
The water is as high as the mountain!
secretary, who have real influence in villagers’
conduct and discipline.1 So they drew up some
stipulations about how to use the octagonal pool.
In fact, environmental awareness really began in
1 In the period since liberation.
2
those days. Have a look at the “Tablet of Three
Prohibitions”: “Killing chickens and slaughtering
sheep is not allowed on the edge of the pool,
beasts of burden are not allowed to drink directly
from the pool, women are not allowed to wash
and starch clothes, and children are not allowed
to jump in and bathe.”
In 1969, during the time of the people’s
communes, the villagers opened a mine behind
the mountain. Then about 10 years ago, just
overnight, all of the 72 wells in the village dried
up. There wasn’t enough water and people had
to queue up with their water buckets to get any.
These days our drinking water is well water, but
it’s not from wells in the village. It’s from down
there where you turn a corner on the highway,
where the government sank a motor-pumped
well. That water has had to be raised in two
stages to be brought to our village, a distance of
800 metres in total.
The water in Magic Water Village just
disappeared, firstly, because of the drought and
secondly, because of mining. In the last 20 years
or so it has only poured with rain a couple of
times.
In the last two or three years, the authorities
have said that we aren’t allowed to mine coal any
more, and all the small scale mines have closed.
We’ve been to look, but we couldn’t see them
as they’ve all been filled in and covered over.
Ordinary people used to pay a bit over 200 yuan
a ton for coal to cook with, but now it’s over 700
yuan a ton. The quality is very good; it’s just that
it’s too expensive. What can we do? We can only
go up the mountain to cut firewood.
No water anymore. At the end of the 60s and
in the early 70s, educated youth were sent
to the countryside, and when they got to the
village they filled in the octagonal pool. They
had nowhere to live, so they built a house on
 Magic Water Village of Mentougou District | Beijing Water Oral History No. 5 | July 2008
that spot. Later, they returned to the city and
the place reverted to the production brigade
again. After the 1978 National Communist
Party Assembly, which disbanded the production
brigades, the house was sold to villagers. The
expansion of the tourism industry has brought
antiquities back into fashion now. So the
authorities have bought the old place back in
order to restore it to its original splendor.
Have a look: this well has a hand winch. In the
past if you lowered it just a few turns you used
to be able to get water. Now check out this two
metre high wall, it was built to keep out the
water that flowed past here all year round. Over
there is a creek; that’s the Jade Emperor Temple;
then looking further up, next to that walnut
tree there’s a well. “The water is as high as the
mountain!”2
Now we’re “returning grain growing land to
forestry,” and we’ve planted some apricot, walnut
and jujube trees. Just look, those are persimmon
trees, and over there are some flowering
crabapples, aren’t they beautiful?
Authors’ Commentary
For centuries this small village was protected
from wind and storm by the hills, concealed by
pines and cypress trees, and surrounded by clear
springs. The Solitary Mountain massif was made
of very hard igneous rock that doesn’t weather
or erode. Soil was deposited on it for eons so
that trees grew thickly, hiding the buried coal
deposits and that’s why so much spring water
poured out of the rock crevices.
When the villagers started small-scale coal
mining, they dug through to the aquifers, which
caused the direction of the underground water to
change. The water levels in the 72 wells dropped,
to the point where they just dried up. As a result
2 This is a Chinese expression meaning water is
plentiful.
of the drop in water level, the trees died.
Eventually the small mines were closed down.
But the villagers can’t afford to buy coal from
elsewhere at today’s prices. The only thing they
can do is chop down more trees for firewood
– which just exacerbates the problem of
deforestation. Ten ancient trees in the village
have been listed on the “Register of Beijing’s
famous ancient trees” but they are endangered
by the destruction of the river system and
continuous drought.
Right now, Magic Water Village is attracting
investors who want to develop cultural tourism.
They plan to dig an even deeper well in the
village and expand the alcohol brewing, food and
beverage industries – making it hard to avoid
another turn in the wheel of the vicious circle.
My Home and Water: A People’s Account
Beijing, once famous for its sweet spring water
and clear-flowing rivers is now infamous for
its polluted canals and dried up riverbeds. My
Home and Water: A People’s Account provides a
rare uncensored glimpse of life and water in the
ancient capital of Beijing and surrounding areas
– as told by longtime residents.
Translation, editing and online publication of
the series by Chinese author Dai Qing and Probe
International has been made possible by funding
from the Foundation Open Society Institute
(Zug). For more information, contact Probe
International at info@probeinternational.org