The Grand Canal

Prologue: The First Spade

In 486 BCE, outside the city of Yangzhou, the spring flood was rising. King Fuchai of Wu stood by the worksite of the Han Gou, watching labourers cut shovel after shovel into the earth to join the Yangtze and the Huai. He could hardly have foreseen that this ditch would become the lifeblood of a civilisation for twenty-five centuries — no other man-made waterway would ever cut deeper into the fate of a nation.

Fuchai’s Ditch, and the Canal of the Sui

Fuchai opened the Han Gou to march north to war — a waterway dug for conquest would become a corridor of civilisation. A thousand years of rising and falling followed, until the time of Emperor Yang of the Sui, when the Yongji, Tongji, Han Gou and Jiangnan canals were joined into one, linking north and south around the centre at Luoyang. For the first time, a single great canal stitched the two ends of the empire together.

Guo Shoujing’s Straight Cut

Under the Yuan, when Dadu (today’s Beijing) became the capital, Guo Shoujing built the Tonghui Canal, straightening the route so that tribute boats reached Dadu directly — the Beijing–Hangzhou Grand Canal in its final form. For centuries its course hardly changed: like an anchor cast into the earth, it pinned northern and southern China together.

The Years of the Tribute Fleets

The Grand Canal was first of all the nation’s “grain-tribute river”: in the Ming and Qing, millions of dan of tribute grain moved north along it every year, with the Grain Tribute Governor-General’s yamen seated at Huai’an. Along its banks rose a string of thriving cities — Yangzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Linqing, Jining… “Wealth of the southeast, soldiers of the northwest”: one river bound the whole empire together. On the wharves, the rice, silk and porcelain of the south met the coal, horses and hides of the north; salt fleets and merchant boats crowded the water, and the cultures of north and south quietly mingled in the teahouses, stages and markets along both banks.

The Turn of the Railway Age

When the whistle of the railway sounded along the canal, tribute shipping declined: the official barges grew fewer, the wharves turned quiet. But the water never stopped flowing. The canal laid down the mission of carrying an empire, settled into the everyday business of rice and salt, and waited quietly for the next age.

2014: The Canal Reborn

In 2014, the Grand Canal was inscribed on the World Heritage List under criteria (i), (iii), (iv) and (vi), covering 27 stretches of waterway and 58 heritage sites across Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Henan.

Today the eastern route of the South-to-North Water Diversion follows the old waterway, and the ancient channel flows full and quick again — the canal continues its story in a new age.

Epilogue: The Water Still Flows

Twenty-five centuries later, standing by the old Han Gou at Yangzhou, you can still see the water glinting. The king who dug it is long gone, but the water still flows — through dynasties, past the railways, into the great artery of the South-to-North Water Diversion, carrying that first spade of 486 BCE all the way to today.

Outstanding Universal Value (OUV)

• Criterion (i): The Grand Canal is the supreme achievement of artificial-canal engineering, displaying the brilliant creation of ancient water conservancy and navigation.
• Criterion (iii): As a transport and tribute system sustained for 2,500 years, it is a unique testimony to the governance of a unified China.
• Criterion (iv): The locks, dams, wharves, granaries and towns along its banks are outstanding examples of hydraulic engineering combined with settlement.
• Criterion (vi): The canal fostered the blending of northern and southern cultures and is directly associated with the formation of a shared Chinese identity.

Facts at a Glance

• Construction began in 486 BCE; the Beijing–Hangzhou line is about 1,800 km long
• Inscribed in 2014 with 27 stretches of waterway and 58 heritage sites across eight provinces and municipalities