This famous Chinese fable tells the tale of an old man who decided to dig through a mountain that blocked his path. Others called it a fool’s errand, but Heaven was impressed by his perseverance and moved the mountains to form a road.
In the late 4th century BC, King Huiwen of Qin wanted to conquer Shu, a kingdom in modern-day Sichuan. The region is too mountainous for an army to traverse, so Huiwen initiated Qin’s first megaproject: Stone Cattle Road, a road which spanned some 500 kilometers. Rivers were dammed and forests felled. In some places holes were bored into the sides of the mountains and fit with logs to construct a wooden pathway above. Then Qin overran Shu.
Huiwen’s son and successor, Zhaoxiang, dispatched an engineer named Li Bing to the newly conquered region. Li Bing undertook a huge irrigation project called Dujiangyan. According to Steven Sage, it was the “largest, most carefully planned public works project yet seen anywhere on the Eastern half of the Eurasian continent”. It ended floods in Sichuan, and caused the region to become extremely productive. Li Bing became a legend, and is said to have defeated a river god in combat.
Another feat of engineering happened under Zhaoxiang’s great grandson, who became the First Emperor of China. He ordered the construction of a canal to connect the Yangtze and Pearl River Basins, allowing people to sail from Beijing all the way south to where modern-day Hong Kong stands—a distance of 2,000 kilometers. This Lingqu Canal, spanning 36 kilometers, was the first canal in the world to connect two river valleys.
The Qin dynasty’s engineering projects reflect its general attitude towards power. Strong proponents of what would later be called Legalism, Qin rulers believed that common people – left to their own devices – would act without virtue. It was the job of the rulers to shape them through draconian yet just laws and expectations. This more broadly displays their desire to model the world according to their will and the belief that with enough manpower, they could do anything.
But despite the megaprojects, the construction of the Great Wall, the registration and surveillance of households, and the standardisation of regional scripts and currency, the Imperial Qin dynasty collapsed after just fifteen years.
Some two thousand years later, an ardent admirer of Qin named Mao Zedong retold the fable of the man moving the mountains. He embarked on a quest to transform the land and people of China through sheer human willpower. The result: a famine which killed millions, and a cultural Revolution which left the country scarred. Though these histories serve as a warning about human folly, one cannot help but admire that wreckless determination to move mountains.