Beacon Cape

　　    Beacon Cape is a hilltop located three kilometers east of Guanghai Town on the seashore. A beacon tower was built on the hill, serving as an ancient site where smoke signals were lit to raise alarms. To the east of the hill lies the Sanjia Estuary — where the Dalong River, Dou Mountain River, and Tanjue River converge into the Sanjia River before flowing into the sea. The banks of the Sanjia River form vast alluvial plains. This beach is covered in white during high tide and left crusted with salt after the tide recedes. The land here is too salty for farming, and the water is unusable.

　　    In 1959, thousands of workers completed the first phase of the project after a year of hard work, constructing a sluice gate and a ship lock. The sluice gate stretches 221 meters and features 48 large openings, with a highway bridge built over it. The ship lock is over 260 meters long and 10 meters wide. To the east of the sluice gate, along the eroded beach stretching to Tian Tou Baixiao, an over 8-kilometer-long seawall was erected.

　　    In 1960, tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians entered the Beacon Cape construction site. They excavated a diversion channel and sealed off the mouth where the old river flowed into the sea. After two years of grueling effort, they successfully dug a diversion channel that was 5 kilometers long, over 200 meters wide, and 4 meters deep, and blocked the original 220-meter-wide mouth of the Sanjia River. From then on, the southern coast of China gained another massive granary and fishery.