Grand Canal of China
The Grand Canal of China that runs from Beijing in the north Hangzhou in the south is the oldest and longest canal in the world. As the greatest engineering project in water resources and transportation in ancient China, the waterway is as famous as the Great Wall. The earliest section of the canal is the Han canal, built in 486 BC. In the later years of the Spring and Autumn period,
King Eucha of the State of Wu fought his rivals in the north, and set up the city of Han (today's Yangzhou). Later he built the Han Gou (Han Canal) to divert water from the Yangtze River in the south. A number of man-made ditches connected lakes along its way, and the Yangtze, Huaihe, Yishui, and Jishui rivers. In the Sui Dynasty, Emperor Yangdi dispatched contingents of builders to work for six years on a 2,700-km Grand Canal, which ran to Zhuozhou in the north and Hangzhou in the south from the Sui capital Luoyang. The ancient Han canal was dredged and widened to become an important section of the Grand Canal. In the 13th century, Kublai Khan, the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, set up the Yuan capital in Beijing. To connect the economic center in the south with the political center in the north, the Yuan Empire implemented a gigantic project to revamp and improve the Grand Canal of the Sui Dynasty from 1283 to 1292. The new Grand Canal, with a total length of 1792 km, ran from Tongzhou in the suburbs of Beijing to Hangzhou, now capital of east China's Zhejiang Province.
The Grand Canal connects the six municipalities and provinces of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and the five water systems of the Haihe, Yellow, Huaihe, Yangtze and Qiantang rivers. The Grand Canal consists of man-made waterways, rivers and lakes, and can be divided into seven sections. As an artery between the north and the south, the Grand Canal played a vital role in Chinese history. The waterway was the lifeline for the feudal regimes, which depended on it to ship grain supplies from the south to the north. Besides grain, the canal also transported other commodities. The areas along the canal therefore became a large economic belt, as the boats in the canal brought businessmen and travelers to the towns and cities on its banks. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the markets along the canal were quite prosperous.
Such a grand engineering project was of a high technological content. First of all, large-scale topographic surveys had to be carried out along the line, and the canal had to cross some mountains and hills. Due to the uneven topography and the needs of navigation, locks had to be built to regulate the water level. The Grand Canal is noted for its numerous locks, and the construction workers had accumulated rich experience in building locks. Although there is no record about when the first lock was built, a book compiled in the Southern and Northern Dynasties Period said that during the Jingming reign of the Southern Song Dynasty (423-424) someone was drown in a dou men (lock) when sailing through Yangzhou. This proves that locks had existed in the Southern Dynasties period.
In the Tang Dynasty 18 locks were built on the Lingqu, another canal. In the Northern Song Dynasty the technology of building locks was further developed. At that time, Qiao Weiyue, who was a deputy governor in charge of transportation in Huainan, built several locks on the Grand Canal to ensure the shipping of grain supplies from the south. In AD 984 he supervised the construction of Xihe Lock, which was 76 meters long, and had two movable gates at both ends. When the gates were lifted alternatively, the water level in the lock would change to allow the passage of boats. According to a record made in 1118, more than 500 km of waterways on the Grand Canal depended on locks to ensure navigation. In Europe, the first lock was built in 1373.
The Chinese people highly values this Grand Canal, and China is applying for World Cultural Heritage Site status for the canal. |
