Former Site of Kunming Waterworks

In 1916, the air around the Nine Dragon Pool in Kunming's Green Lake Park filled with the scent of wet earth and coal smoke. Workers cleared the white sandstone to expose nine natural springs, the historic water source for a growing city. For generations, residents carried buckets of river water, which was often contaminated or scarce. Following the arrival of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway in 1910 and electricity from the Shilongba Hydroelectric Power Station in 1912, local elites Huang Yucheng, Luo Peijin, and Wang Can proposed a modern solution. Backed by military governor Tang Jiyao, they hired French engineer Dyar from the Haiphong Mechanical Construction Company to build the city's first municipal water system.

On May 2, 1918, the system began operating.Early customers paid for this new "machine water" using small water tokens, feeling the cool touch of the metal in their palms. Local farmers initially feared the pumps would dry up the Xima River and ruin their crops. However, the springs proved abundant. The pumps ran until 1956, when falling underground water levels silenced the machinery. Converted into a museum in September 1999, this small brick building preserves the physical transition of Kunming into a modern urban center, where the cold iron of European machinery met the ancient springs of Yunnan.

Today, the original pump house stands as a compact 31.5-square-meter brick structure. Next to it, a 3,776-square-meter reservoir still channels the natural spring water. Inside the quiet, two-room building, visitors look down into an indoor pit containing the original mechanical heart of the station. Two French-made SS water pumps, paired with German Siemens electric motors installed in 1916, rest in their original black cast-iron finish.