The waterwheel is also known as the "Crown Wheel", "Overturned Wheel" and "Tiger Wheel". Its origin can be traced back to the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. In the second year of Jiajing's reign in the Ming Dynasty (AD 1523), after Duan Zitan, a native of Lanzhou, passed the Jinshi examination, he served as a Taoist censor in Yunnan. He traveled to several southern provinces as an official and offered many favorable policies. Once in the countryside, he discovered that a wooden keel drum cart could draw water for irrigation. He observed its structural principles and drew a diagram to take with him. Later, when he returned to his hometown, he studied and practiced carefully, and finally successfully developed the first waterwheel in history in 1556. It was located outside Guangwu Gate in present-day Lanzhou City and named it "Waterwheel Park". Soon, both sides of the Yellow River were Farmers rushed to imitate them, and they became popular. Not to be outdone, the people of Longwan imitated the two waterwheels we see now. Although they were rebuilt later, they still retain many of the characteristics of the ancient waterwheels.
Lanzhou Waterwheel was created and made by Duan Xu, a native of Lanzhou in the Ming Dynasty, based on absorbing and learning from southern waterwheel technology. The water wheel solves the problem of high river banks and low water levels making it difficult to carry out irrigation, greatly benefiting agriculture along the river. Therefore, farmers along the coast followed suit. By the Qing Dynasty, more than 300 waterwheels were erected on both sides of the Yellow River in Lanzhou, becoming a unique cultural landscape on the Lanzhou section of the Yellow River. Ye Li, a poet during the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, wrote a poem: "The waterwheel rotates from the reincarnation, pouring snow over the nine curves of silver. I believe in the clever poem of Qinglian, and the water of the Yellow River comes from the sky." Lanzhou waterwheels are featured in the painting "Flood Moon" by Wen Xiaozhou, a landscape painter from Lanzhou in the late Qing Dynasty.
In 1935, the Official Money Bureau of Ping City, Gansu Province issued a set of banknotes depicting the scenery of Lanzhou. One of the banknotes with a face value of 50 cents was based on a waterwheel: three waterwheels are arranged side by side in the picture. , standing on the bank of the red and yellow Yellow River, tall and majestic, with great visual impact.
In 1938, the famous historian Mr. Gu Jiegang visited Lanzhou's Xiaoxi Lake and wrote: "There are small flowers and trees in the garden, and they are next to the river embankment. The most scenic spot in Lanzhou. "In the 1930s, waterwheels were often used as themes in Lanzhou folk embroidery works. Meng Shuzu wrote in "Northwest Highlights" published in 1943: "I have seen all the hand-cranked waterwheels, pedal waterwheels, ox-drawn waterwheels, wind-powered waterwheels, and mechanical waterwheels in the south of the Yangtze River. I thought they were used for water irrigation in China. The waterwheels in the northwest are all here. Now I know that Jiangnan is only a corner of China. What I saw before was only part of it, and it was too small. Only the waterwheels in the northwest can be said to be solemn and great. "The northwest mentioned here. Waterwheel refers to the Yellow River waterwheel. By 1952, there were still 252 waterwheels standing on both sides of the Yellow River. However, with the development of society and economy, the Yellow River waterwheels were basically replaced by modern water conservancy tools and gradually disappeared from the banks of the Yellow River.
The Yellow River waterwheel has been an agricultural irrigation tool in Lanzhou since its advent during the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty (1556 AD). Since the 1950s, electric irrigation has gradually emerged. More than 200 old waterwheels in Lanzhou have been dismantled and scattered one after another as they completed their historical missions. Only the Xiachuancun waterwheel has been preserved. In 2001, after this 160-year-old waterwheel was listed as a provincial cultural relic, the people of Xiachuan Village carefully maintained it as a cultural heritage and tourism resource of the village. After four years of inactivity, it started spinning again.