Multiple makings at China’s first hydroelectric power station at Shilongba, 1908–1912

Abstract

ABSTRACT China’s first hydroelectric station began producing electricity in 1912, a year better known for marking the end of imperial rule and the advent of republican governance. Located a short distance outside of the southwestern city of Kunming, Shilongba (Stone Dragon Dam) was a cross-cultural endeavour that involved long-distance encounters of both materials and expertise that spanned not just vast expanses within China, but also a world divided by competing imperial interests. The technologies involved were at once both new and old. Turbines and dynamos represented the latest in German innovation, but the techniques used to carve the canal and lower the water table had been perfected over centuries. A history of Shilongba thus allows us to approach China’s transition from Empire to Republic not merely as a political process but also as one of multiple makings – of state, technology, energy, society, and not least, history itself. This paper explores these multiple makings, focusing on the first phase of construction from 1908 to 1912, when a dam was constructed, a canal dug, and the first power station established.