World's oldest hydrological station in the Yangtze River will be submerged into water for good after the first-stage water storage of the Three Gorges Dam in June, 2003.

China has given up an earlier effort to build an underwater museum at Baiheliang (White Crane Ridge), which carries 18 fish figurines to measure the water level in low water seasons and over 30,000 characters of poems, which were carved by ancients over the past 1,200 years.

"Technological difficulties make the plan fail, but Chinese government will make more efforts to protect the relics, which is a symbolic cultural heritage of the Three Gorges," said Shao Weidong, deputy director of the cultural heritage protection division of the Cultural Department of Chongqing Municipality.

The White Crane Ridge is a 1,600 meter-long and 15 meter-wide natural rock ridge located in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.

It was given the name because white cranes use to land on it in ancient times. The ridge only shows out of water at low water season between winter and spring every year. Chinese ancients carved symbols of water on the ridge, and predicted agricultural harvest according to symbols.

After the completion of the Three Gorges Project in 2009, the White Crane Ridge will be 40 meters deep underwater.

Archeologists noted that inscriptions on the ridge date to an earlier period and are greater in number than the famous low-water carvings along the Nile in Egypt.

The White Crane Ridge was called a "wonder of world's hydrological history." Experts have drawn important hydrological information from the relics during the construction of the Three Gorges Project, world's largest water conservancy project.

Five years ago, under the support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Chinese cultural heritage departments had planned to invest over 100 million yuan (US$ 12 million) to protect the White Crane Ridge in an underground museum.

"However, it proves to be unfeasible for the complicated hydrological and geological conditions and huge sum of investment, " Shao said, adding that the earlier stage of underwater investigation and designing of the museum have cost over 1 million yuan.

According to the latest protection plan, the most important section of the hydrological relics will be replicated on the bank of the Yangtze River. In addition, the government will earmark over 10 million yuan to brace up the relics site to leave it intact for later generations.

The reinforcement project will guarantee the relics will not be damaged for hundreds of years. It will still be possible for the later generations to conduct underwater archaeology to the relics, said Shao.

Calculations show that the ridge will be gradually covered by mud and sand in 20 years. Experts will do experiments on computers to simulate the possible damages to the relics caused by mud and sand.

Besides, experts will use steel tubes to support the rock body and spray a special material over the surface of the carvings to increase their toughness and strength.

(People's Daily 06/21/2001)