Shi Shi-bang was born in 1671 into a well-to-do family with roots in Jinjiang, Fujian, and became one of the great landowning developers of early Qing Taiwan. Holding minor official rank, he acquired extensive land rights on the Changhua plain — fertile ground that suffered from a chronic want of water. Resolving to unlock its potential, he financed and organised one of the most ambitious irrigation works the island had yet seen: a great canal to divert the powerful Zhuoshui River across the plain. Begun in 1709, the project was beset by years of difficulty in taming the river at its intake, and tradition holds that a mysterious old man remembered only as Mr. Lin appeared to teach the builders the technique of the woven-bamboo weir that finally succeeded, then departed without reward. Completed around 1719, the canal watered eight districts — the 'eight bao' that gave it its name — and transformed Changhua into one of Taiwan's richest granaries, drawing waves of settlers to its newly productive fields. Shi Shi-bang died in 1743. He is remembered as the patron and builder of the Babao Canal, a work of private enterprise and collective labour whose waters still cross the Changhua plain nearly three centuries later.

• Financed and built the Babao Canal on the Changhua plain

• Turned Changhua into one of Taiwan's richest granaries