If a regular concrete dam were to be built on such ground, its foundations would have to go down at least 137 feet, a frightfully expensive procedure. Engineers produced a reasonable alternative by using the recently developed technique called grouting. In this process, a mixture of water, cement, and clay is pumped into porous ground under high pressure, sealing off the foundation without requiring excavation to bed rock. A series of tests established that this process was feasible for Shek Pik, and preparations to build an earth dam were made in 1958. The dam was to be 2,300 feet long, with a maximum height of 180 feet. It would back up 5 billion, 400 million gallons; a third of the colony’s total water storage. A ten-mile tunnel was to carry the water from the treatment works near the dam to Silver Mine Bay. From there it would be pumped under the sea in twin 30-inch-diameter pipelines to reach Hong Kong Island, eight miles east of Lantau. Fifteen miles of catchwaters were to drain about twelve square miles of land, aided by the fact that rainfall on Lantau Island is generally ten percent heavier than on Hong Kong Island and is more evenly distributed throughout the year. One of the tunnels was delayed for a time by a peculiarly Chinese problem; its “fung shui” was regarded as injurious to a resident dragon. The fung shui, a very important consideration among local people, meant that any proposed change in the local landscape had to be undertaken with great care. It would never do to nip off the top of a hill that was shaped like a dragon, for that might blind the mythical beast and put a hex on the countryside. The thing to do was to hire a fung shui expert from a nearby village; for a suitable fee, he would propitiate the dragon and the work of dam-building could proceed. In a more practical way, the engineers had to install concrete channels and pipelines to make certain that sufficient quantities of water were diverted to irrigate farms near the catchment area. Hillsides above the big catchwaters had to be faced with chunam, a mixture of straw, lime, clay and cement which keeps the hillside soil from washing into the catchwaters and clogging them. By early 1962, the southwestern portion of Lantau was criss-crossed by deep catchwaters and the earth dam was rising at the foot of the valley, with its core of impermeable clay being made ready for a covering of ordinary clay and dirt. Up in the mountains at the head of the valley, Buddhist monks and nuns continued their quiet, contemplative existence in the Po Lin Monastery, almost untouched by the dam project. Even when a few more guests stayed overnight at the Po Lin hostel, the pattern of prayer and work did not change.