page_title: Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture
section_title: The hydro dams
hierarchical_section_title: Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture / History and culture / The hydro dams
caption_attribution_description: English: Liujiaxia Dam
context_page_description: Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, formerly known as Hezhou, is located in Gansu Province, south of the provincial capital Lanzhou, bordering Qinghai to the west. It is an autonomous prefecture for the Muslim Hui people, a large Chinese ethnic group. It also includes two autonomous counties for other Muslim groups, namely Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar.
context_section_description: In 1955, just a few years after the creation of the People's Republic of China, the Communist government announced  a large-scale program of hydroelectric dam construction on the Yellow River. Two of them were constructed in Linxia Prefecture's Yongjing County: the 57-meter high Yanguoxia Dam (1958–1961) and the 147-meter high Liujiaxia Dam (1958–1969). One more - the 33-meter high Bapanxia Dam (1968–1975) - although located in Lanzhou's Xigu District, had much of its reservoir within Yongjing County as well. The dams contributed greatly to the national  economy - Liujiaxia Hydro Power Station remained the country's largest until the 1980s - but the reservoirs they created in narrow, but fertile valleys of the Yellow River and its tributaries displaced a large number of local farmers. The three reservoirs flooded 118,229 (7,881 hectares) of farmland and displaced 43,829 residents, primarily in Yongjing County. The compensation payments to the farmers affected by the  Yanguoxia and Liujiaxia Dams averaged, supposedly, 250 yuan and 364 yuan per person, were grossly insufficient to allow them to reestablish their way of life. It is said that the residents received lower compensation amount than they could otherwise because in 1958, when the Yanguoxia project started, they understated the value of their assets, as they were afraid to be classified as "rich peasants", i.e. class enemies.
  Even the more generous payments (averaging 1,100 per person) to those affected by the Bapanxia Dam were not an adequate substitute for the loss of the farmland.
caption: The Liujiaxia Dam, in Liujia Gorge
exif: {"Image Make": "CASIO COMPUTER CO.,LTD", "Image Model": "EX-Z50", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "0.90", "Image DateTime": "2009:07:28 15:21:41", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "282", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 5, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, 22, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 5, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 16, 129, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "34438", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "8370", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "31/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:07:28 15:21:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:07:28 15:21:41", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "11/3", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "14/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Daylight", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "61/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2560", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1920", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "34314", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0/0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "74", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Hard"}