China’s oldest water pipes were built communally

Very cool stuff. I got interested in ancient Chinese plumbing after watching the water dragons[1] at the forbidden city, during the recent flooding in Beijing.

Interesting that both this system, and the one described in the article (over 2000 years earlier, and in a different part of China) had the singular purpose of managing floods, rather than irrigation or providing potable water, even though neither place has a history of frequent flooding.

There's a saying that "traditions are solutions to problems we've forgotten", and it looks like a lot of traditional architecture and infrastructure in China did take into account the types of climate change problems we're currently facing; modern Beijing flooded, but the Imperial City didn't.

[1] Pictures available here https://www.setn.com/m/news.aspx?newsid=1327789