19 March 2021, Friday, 13:13 163

Chongqing Baiheliang Underwater Museum launches underwater cleaning

Редактор: Тимофій Борзенко

Baiheliang Underwater Museum. Photo by Xinhua.

The divers passed through the pressure chamber and entered the inscribed pressureless container cover of Baiheliang more than 40 meters underwater, focusing on cleaning the underwater lamps and lampshades, the observation window glass of the visiting corridor, and the sediment on the inscription body, The Xinhua News Agency reports.

Photo by Xinhua.

Baiheliang is a natural stone beam with a length of about 1.6 kilometers and an average width of 15 meters in the heart of the Fuling section of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in Chongqing.

Photo by Xinhua.

There are 165 inscriptions on the beam from 763 to 1963, recording the low-water hydrology of the Fuling section of the Yangtze River for more than 1,200 years.

Photo by Xinhua.

The Baiheliang Underwater Museum was officially completed and opened in 2009. The original appearance of the inscription is protected by the principle of "pressure-free container". Visitors can take the escalator down to the underwater viewing corridor and see the protective cover clearly through the viewing window. The inscription of Baiheliang lying still in the water.

Photo by Xinhua.

Baiheliang, literally "White Crane Ridge", is a 1,600-meter-long and 25 meter-wide smooth stone ridge engraved with inscriptions about China's longest river in the Tang Dynasty to the early 20th century. On the huge rock are 20 fish sculptures that serve as water-level markers and about 30,000 characters of Chinese poems from different dynasties. It is claimed to be the world's oldest hydrographic survey device and is one of the four state-level national treasures in the Three Gorges area.