Legacy
Li Bing was given the title of king during the Song Dynasty for his achievement. This was highly unusual. Only in a few cases in Chinese history was a man not actually a member of royal family given the title king (others are Kong Qiu, Guan Yu, and Yue Fei). "As an irrigation project, it may not seem to deserve being ranked alongside the Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, but it is actually one of mankind's most extraordinary achievements. ... The ancient Roman engineer, Sextus Julius Frontinus who wrote ... in the first century after Christ that his aqueducts were indispensable, and would be remembered long after "the idle pyramids, or the useless though famous works of the Greeks."" Li Bing had achieved an engineering masterwork that had been done as a response to a public need and it has succeeded in taming a river for the subsequent time since its completion in 250 BCE. No other wonder of the ancient world continues to function as it was designed. This project was completed 300 years prior to the work of Frontinus in Rome.
Read more about this topic: Li Bing (administrator)
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)