Riverside police

Lao Wu had discussed with several schools last year about organizing primary and secondary school students to visit the port area. It was not deliberately arranged during the days when the Changjiang Navigation Bureau held a publicity work meeting in Binjiang.

In fact, the work of promoting the Yangtze River started two months ago, but there were too many primary and secondary school students to visit, and the reception capacity of several units in the port area was limited. They could only let several schools that were interested in this organize students to come in batches during holidays.

The sixth batch came to visit today. Hanhan is a little tour guide today. Her mother is busier than anyone else now. She has to be on duty in the waters of the Yangtze River Bridge on weekends. Han Yu greeted Director Zhang, Director Huang and other leaders at dinner last night. Today, she will not attend the publicity work meeting and will accompany her daughter to receive the children who come to the port area to visit and study.

Five batches have been received before, so just follow the original process.

The first stop is the Changjiang Navigation Public Security Bureau, because the leaders in charge of publicity from various units of the Changjiang Navigation system will come to visit in the afternoon. Many exhibition boards are arranged in the hall. It is very simple to look at the exhibition boards.

Today, Xiao Chen's wife Ge Xiaoqian was on duty at the branch office. Seeing the children's excitement, she couldn't help but sigh: "Director Han, children nowadays are so lucky. They can participate in all kinds of activities. I didn't participate in any activities when I was a child."

Han Yu stood in the corner, watching his daughter talking in Mandarin with a Donghai accent, and pondered: "Children nowadays are so pitiful. Not to mention touching a gun, it's even difficult to see a real gun."

"Touch a gun?" Ge Xiaoqian asked subconsciously.

Now the control of guns is very strict, and even the armed forces rarely organize militia training. Unlike before, when militiamen could even take guns home, children have plenty of opportunities to touch guns.

Han Yu sincerely felt that a country and a nation should not lose their martial spirit, and patriotic education and national defense education should not be carried out only in the classroom. He simply turned around and said, "Xiao Qian, go see who is on duty at the gun warehouse today, and ask the duty officer to bring a few guns over so that the children can touch them."

"Yes!"

As soon as Ge Xiaoqian left, the school leaders and teachers who organized the children to visit said sincerely, "Director Han, thank you."

"It's not a thank you, this is what we should do." Han Yu smiled, full of a sense of accomplishment.

...

As expected, as the duty officer of the gun warehouse took out a few guns, the children were extremely excited. Especially the little boys, who rushed forward to touch them. Hanhan's explanation was interrupted, and she could only stand on the side and pout secretly complain that the director's father only knew how to make trouble.

According to the original process, the second stop is the navigation department.

The situation of the Channel Department is different from that of the Changjiang Navigation Bureau. Most of the cadres and staff work on the river. There are not many cadres on the shore. In the past few days, they have to do conference work under the leadership of Comrade Lao Wu. They really can't spare anyone to receive the children who come to visit the port area, so they simply send the exhibition board of the Channel Department to the Changjiang Navigation Bureau.

After the students finished looking at the gun, Hanhan raised the microphone and reminded: "Students, please be quiet, let's continue. Before formally introducing the Yangtze River waterway, I have a small question. Have any students been to the ferry and take the ferry across the river from the ferry? Please raise your hand if you have."

"Me, I took the ferry!"

"I have taken it, and I have to take the Binzhang ferry every time I cross the river."

The children are very enthusiastic. They are all children from the urban area. Their family economic conditions are better than those of rural children. Most of them have been to cities such as Donghai and Guzhou, and they all raised their hands.

"Then have the students seen such a boat on the river?" Hanhan pointed to the photos on the exhibition board and asked.

"I have seen it."

"This is an engineering ship."

"It's a sand-dredging ship!"

"Yes, this is the sand-dredging ship for dredging waterways."

Han Han pointed to the Yangtze River waterway map on the display board and said, "The Yangtze River has always been known as the 'Golden Waterway'. However, every year, 480 million tons of silt rushes down from the upper reaches and accumulates at the mouth of the Yangtze River, forming a 'barrier sand', like a bone stuck in the throat, which seriously affects shipping and the economic development of the Yangtze River Basin."

A child exclaimed, "480 million tons, how much silt is that?"

Han Han only knew that 480 million tons was a lot, but she had no intuitive concept of how much it was. She racked her brains to think about it, and said with a smile while holding the microphone, "It is precisely because of the extremely large amount of silt that rushes down from the upper reaches every year that the Yangtze River is also called the island-building river. It has built China's third largest island in more than a thousand years, and is still building islands at a rate of five square kilometers per year. Dear students, do you know which island is China's third largest island?"

"I don't know."

"It's Hengming Island."

Hanhan smiled slightly and continued: "East China Sea, East China Sea, there is a river but no sea! This saying has been passed down for many years, reflecting the shackles of East China Sea shipping development in the 1980s, and also affecting the economic development of Binjiang upstream."

For fear that the children in Binjiang would not understand, Hanhan explained: "Every year, hundreds of millions of tons of silt block the 'throat' of the Yangtze River. Governing the Yangtze River estuary and opening the 'barrier sand' has become the long-cherished wish of several generations, and is also the economic development of cities along the Yangtze River such as Donghai and Binjiang. The actual needs of economic take-off.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the original depth of the Yangtze River estuary was only 6 meters. After 50 years of digging, from 1949 to 1998, the depth of the Yangtze River estuary only increased by 1 meter, from 6 meters to 7 meters.

"One inch of water depth is one inch of gold", if the waterway is not deep enough, the cargo ship cannot pass safely. There are two sets of data to illustrate the impact of the waterway on the navigation of cargo ships. The first set of data is that for every centimeter increase in the draft of the cargo ship, it can load more than 100 tons of cargo.

The second set of data was told to me by my father. In 1992, he was working as a first mate on an ocean-going cargo ship. His last voyage was from Australia to the East China Sea. He clearly remembered that the water depth of the North Channel in the East China Sea was only 7 meters at that time. , their container ships have a draft of 10.5 meters, and they have to wait until the tide exceeds 3.5 meters before they can enter the port.

In 1990, when the Pudong New Area was being developed, the total tonnage of ships in the Yangtze River Delta region exceeded the inland water transport capacity of the entire Europe. However, the Yangtze River trunk line, which is about three times as long as the Rhine River, has less than one-tenth of the freight volume of the Rhine River. one.

Before 1998, even if the North Channel of the Yangtze Estuary relied on dredging, the water depth could only be maintained at about 7 meters. Ships with a draft of 9.5 meters can only pass an average of about 15 ships a day. Large ships must reduce their load outside the Yangtze River Estuary before riding the tide to enter, while foreign trade containers need to be transited in Hong Kong and Kobe, Japan. This greatly increases shipping costs, so the 'blocking sand' must be solved! "

Ge Xiaoqian was stunned for a while after hearing this, and couldn't help asking: "Director Han, how come Han Han knows everything?"

"Except for cultural classes, there's nothing she doesn't understand." Han Yu said with a wry smile.

Principal Liu, who led the team to visit, admired Hanhan very much and said with a smile: "Han Bureau, you are providing quality education. As for the results of cultural classes, with a little guidance, they should not be bad."

"I'm having a headache about this. She's in fifth grade now. If she doesn't put in some effort, she will definitely not be able to keep up when she gets to junior high school."

"Don't worry, you can make up for it now."

Han Yu later asked Principal Liu for advice on how to help Han Han make up for cultural classes. Han Han said vividly from the front: "However, the Yangtze River estuary is 90 kilometers wide, with typhoons in summer and cold waves in winter. How easy is it to manage it? In order to solve the problem of blocking sand. Regarding the problem, the Ministry of Transport invited world-leading experts from the Netherlands and the United States. After inspection, foreign experts came to the conclusion that the Yangtze River Estuary cannot be managed!”

"What should we do?" a child asked eagerly.

"Foreign experts say no, we can only rely on ourselves!"

Han Han looked at the display board and said with excitement: "In 1992, the 'Research on the Evolution Law and Regulation Technology of the Yangtze Estuary Barrage Channel' was included in the national 'Eighth Five-Year Plan' scientific and technological research plan. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Transport, the Yangtze Estuary Channel The predecessor of the bureau, the Yangtze Estuary Channel Construction Co., Ltd., combined with many domestic scientific research, design, and construction units, began to 'march' to the Yangtze Estuary.

In January 1997, at an expert symposium on the Yangtze Estuary Deepwater Channel Management Project, the then state prime minister clarified the guiding ideology of “one-time planning, phased construction, phased results, and early treatment to 8.5 meters.” One year later, the first phase of the Yangtze Estuary Deepwater Channel Management Project kicked off.

But it is not easy to build a stable dam of more than 100 kilometers on the soft seabed. The biggest problem is, how to lay the software row on the seabed? The builders creatively used geotextiles to make bags, and then put the sand into the bags and sank them to the bottom of the river to form a soft row, which is equivalent to spreading a layer of 'sand quilt' on the bottom of the river.

In March 2000, the first phase of the project was completed nine months ahead of schedule. A total of nearly 75 kilometers of levees and 10 spur dams were built, and nearly 52 kilometers of waterway were dredged. The layer of 'sand quilt' reduced the water depth of the Yangtze River Estuary channel from 7 meters. The increase to 8.5 meters has changed the history that ships of 10,000 tons need to wait for the tide to enter the port and ships of 25,000 tons and above need to reduce their load and wait for the tide to pass. The navigation capacity has been increased by 4 times. The throughput capacity and container throughput of East China Sea Port are the highest in the world. Ranking moves up quickly.

However, the construction unit had just finished celebrating and the Ministry of Transportation had just announced the opening of navigation, and five consecutive typhoons were approaching. In just half a year, the newly built channel was silted up again, and the water depth dropped from 8.5 meters to 7.3 meters. The sediment accumulated in the channel can fill 6 West Lakes, and billions were wasted. Engineer They all cried. "

"What happened next?" a little girl asked eagerly.

Han Han took several deep breaths and continued: "During that time, the Yangtze Estuary Deep Water Channel Project Construction Headquarters located on Hengsha Island worked around the clock, and finally restored the water depth to 8 meters on New Year's Day in 2001.

In April 2002, the second phase of the Yangtze Estuary Management Project officially started, with the main task being to control building construction. The construction site continues to extend to the sea, making construction more difficult. Engineers used a new type of hollow gravity structure, the semicircular caisson, to reduce costs.

But that winter, after the first cold wave and strong winds, the caisson sank and the embankment was cut in half. After countless sleepless nights, engineers designed the 'hollow cube' to reinforce the submarine foundation...

At the end of March 2005, the second phase of the deep-water channel project at the Yangtze Estuary was completed ahead of schedule. The water depth of the channel increased from 8.5 meters to 10 meters, providing guarantee for the continued growth of cargo throughput at East China Sea Port. In 2005, the annual cargo throughput of Donghai Port reached 443 million tons, surpassing the Port of Singapore for the first time and becoming the largest port in the world! Binjiang also benefits from this, because large-tonnage cargo ships can enter the Yangtze River and berth at Binjiang Port through the 'barrier sand'! "

Principal Liu didn't know this before and said with emotion: "Han Bureau, I didn't expect the waterway to be so important and the country's investment in the waterway to be so large."

"The importance of the Yangtze River Estuary Channel Project may exceed that of the Yangtze River Bridge under construction." Han Yu took a deep breath, thought about it and said: "Now the goal of 10 meters of water depth has been achieved, but 10 meters of water depth is far from enough. The third phase of the project is underway , we should be able to achieve 12.5 meters in a few years.”

"How big a cargo ship can be navigable at 12.5 meters?"

"90,000 tons, but it can only maintain the section from the Yangtze River estuary to Jiangcheng." Han Yu paused, then continued: "But the silt will continue to accumulate. To maintain a water depth of 12.5 meters, the waterway department needs to dredge continuously, so the engineering ships of the waterway department are working on the river every day. Especially at the Yangtze River estuary, it cannot be stopped for a day."

Principal Liu asked in surprise: "How much money will this cost?"

"Compared with the benefits, these investments are worth it." Han Yu thought about it and said: "But with the rapid development of the import and export economy, even if the water depth of 12.5 meters can be achieved, it is far from enough. Nowadays, cargo ships are getting bigger and bigger, and ships below 100,000 tons are not considered giant ships, so Donghai has to lease Yangshan Island in Zhejiang Sea and spend a huge amount of money to build Yangshan Port and Donghai Cross-sea Bridge."

The second stop for the children to visit is Binjiang Port, which has a special person to explain.

Many children came to the container terminal for the first time, and they were curious about everything they saw, and they were more excited than each other.

Han Yu looked at his daughter who ran to his side, hugged her and smiled: "What you said just now is good. In fact, you can write an essay on the Yangtze River."

"I wrote it."

"When did you write it?"

"Last month," Han Han smiled proudly: "I participated in Grandpa Wu's second "I Love the Yangtze River" essay contest. Grandpa Wu said it was well written and said I could win the first prize in the youth group!"

"Really?"

"Why would I lie to you? If you don't believe me, you can ask Grandpa Wu."

Han Yu asked puzzledly: "Since you can write so well about the Yangtze River, why can't you write a good essay in school? ”

Hanhan looked around and muttered, "Actually, I write very well. My grandparents say it's good, but the teacher says it's not good."

"Did you write off topic?"

"The composition the teacher asked us to write is too childish, and...and the teacher doesn't let us tell the truth. Last time we asked us to write "My Chinese Teacher", I said she had a baby face and freckles on her face, and she was not happy."

"..."

Girls mature earlier than boys, and his daughter lives in a different environment from other children. She really knows more than most children.

Han Yu suddenly realized that this was a problem, and didn't know what to say for a while.