It mainly consists of three buildings, the "Fish mouth" (Yu Zui) with the dam, the "Bottleneck"  (Baopng Kou) and the spillway "Flying Sand" (Feisha Yan). Together with the "Fish Mouth" the dam divides the river Min Jiang into two parts at the top of the dam, the outer and the inner river. During dry seasons, 40% of the discharge flows through the Inner River and 60% through the Outer River. In flood seasons, it is vice versa. The inner river leads to the Bottleneck, which is the entrance of the irrigation channel. It is shaped like an inverted ladder to control the water and evacuate excessive water. Upstream at the inner river you could find the automatically working spillway Flying Sand. This spillway transports 80% of the sediments during flood season to the outer river. Working in harmony with one another, the three projects have composed a complete and scientific irrigation and drainage network, which works automatically to a remarkable degree, and thus guarantees the water for irrigation in the irrigated areas. This very intelligent system irrigates more than 120000 hectares and also protects the plain of Sichuan from floods. The irrigated area now expanded to nearly 660000 hectares of land, covering 36 counties and cities.

During the long course of maintenance of the Dujiangyan Irrigation System, a set of effective experiences in water controlling has been summed up, such as "Dredging the sand deeper and building the dam lower" , "Taking away the capes where the river curves, and digging the middle of the riverbed deep where the river does not curve" , and other instructions.

In the surrounding area we could view the Erwang Temple and the Fulong Temple, which were built to commemorate Li Bing and his son.