This Day, That Year

Item from March 30, 1983, in China Daily: Workers cheer as they break through a tunnel, a key section of a major project to divert water from the Luanhe River to Tianjin. At about 10 kilometers long, the tunnel is the longest in the country and was completed on Monday evening, the Economic Daily reported yesterday.

In December 2014, operations began on the central route for water directed from the Yangtze River to arid northern areas such as Beijing and Tianjin, as part of the national South-to-North Water Diversion Project.

Under the project, more than 3.2 billion cubic meters of water have been channeled, guaranteeing supplies of the precious resource to about 40 million people, according to the relevant authorities.