It was a figuratively and often literally elegant solution, providing social control in the form of a sort of romantic Modernism an America of muscular dams, soaring bridges, and ambitious highways.
It cuts through the intersection of the Hindukush, Himalaya, and Karakoram mountains, lined with Chinese projects as dramatic as their natural settings: glistening dams, hydropower plants, highways soaring through the sky in defiance of deathly mudslides below, and at the top, the Khunjerab Pass.
Rooms are compact yet elegant – the 19th-century 'winter garden' dining room, with its soaring steel and glass roof, is something of a national monument (Dam 9; from £125).
Beneath its green canopy, sunlight filters down on to a panorama of skyscraper trees soaring as much as 180 feet into the air, swampy water pools dammed by beavers, and psychedelic fungi that sprout from tree trunks.
But worries persist about the safety of 84,000 dams and 100,000 miles (160,000km) of levees, many of them built in areas where the population has soared.
