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　　China News Service, Beijing, February 4th: Question: The Grand Canal was excavated 2,500 years ago. What role does it play today?

　　"China News Weekly" reporter Zhang Xinyu

　　The Grand Canal, which runs through eastern and central China, is the longest-running and largest man-made canal in the world. From ancient times to the present, this canal running from north to south has never only played the role of transporting materials. A unique canal culture has been formed around it.

　　From the successful application of the Grand Canal as a World Heritage Site in 2014 to the proposal and construction of the Grand Canal Cultural Belt and the Grand Canal National Cultural Park in 2019, great changes have taken place in both the Grand Canal, the cities along the canal, and the lives of the people along it.

forgotten canal

　　The Grand Canal consists of three canals: the Sui-Tang Grand Canal, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and the Zhejiang East Canal. The earliest section was excavated 2,500 years ago, with a total length of 3,200 kilometers, passing through Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Anhui, Henan, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang. Eight provincial-level administrative regions communicate with five major water systems.

The Huai'an section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in Jiangsu Province is known as the golden waterway. Photo by Zhou Changguo

Transport ships sailing in the Huai'an section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal in Jiangsu. Photo by He Jinghua

　　As a landmark project of Chinese civilization, the protection of the Grand Canal and the inheritance of canal culture have now become a consensus. But in fact, the Grand Canal has been buried in the cracks of history for a long time.

　　The Ming and Qing Dynasties were a glorious moment for water transportation in ancient China, and the canal's influence on the country's politics, economy, and culture continued to increase. But by the end of the Qing Dynasty, both water transportation and canals were in decline.

　　Zheng Minde, deputy director of the Institute of Canal Studies at Liaocheng University, believes that in the late Qing Dynasty, the impact of the Yellow River on the canal continued to increase, but the Qing government did not have enough funds to rectify it, and the canal declined seriously. With the construction of the Tianjin-Puzhou Railway, the introduction of Western ships and the development of the commercial grain market in Beijing, it is no longer necessary to transport grain from the far south of the Yangtze River to Beijing. China's traditional water transportation has declined. Especially in the late Guangxu period, canal management changed from national management to local management. The national and political character of the canal was weakened.

　　Liu Shilin, dean of the Urban Science Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, mentioned in the book "Twenty-one Cities on the Six Thousand Mile Canal" that, as Han Yu said, "parallels die in stables." The Grand Canal declined day by day in the 20th century. Even towards oblivion.

　　This process is, to a certain extent, inevitable in the evolution of historical development. However, since the 21st century, with the help of the application and protection of world cultural heritage, as well as the proposal and construction of the Grand Canal Cultural Belt and the Grand Canal National Cultural Park, this thousand-year-old canal has regained its vitality.

From forgotten to polished

　　Jiang Shili, Party Secretary and Chairman of the Yangzhou Federation of Literary and Art Circles, once served as deputy director of the Grand Canal Joint World Heritage Application Office and participated in the entire process of the Grand Canal's World Heritage application. When talking about his experience participating in the Grand Canal inspection in 2006 and 2007, he said that in the non-navigable canal sections, the river channel was occupied and damaged, cultural relics were excavated, and the ecological environment was seriously polluted, while the navigable river sections Although the section is generally better preserved, over-development has caused damage to cultural heritage.

　　In 2014, the Grand Canal was included in the World Heritage List. In February 2019, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Planning Outline for the Protection, Inheritance and Utilization of the Grand Canal Culture" (hereinafter referred to as the "Planning Outline"), which strengthened the top-level design for the protection and inheritance of the Grand Canal culture.

　　In December 2019, the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, the Hangzhou Municipal Government, and the China News Service jointly created the "Beijing-Hangzhou Dialogue Series" to promote the construction of cities along the Grand Canal and boost many industries including finance, culture and tourism. fields and many industrial achievements have been implemented. The following year, the World Canal Historic and Cultural Cities Cooperation Organization (WCCO) joined, and the event was upgraded from four-party participation to a five-party cooperation mechanism.

The opening ceremony and main forum of the 2023 China Grand Canal Cultural Belt Beijing-Hangzhou Dialogue and Beijing (International) Canal Culture Festival was held in Beijing. Photo by Tomita

　　Zheng Minde pointed out that in the past, there was no overall planning and design for the protection, inheritance, and utilization of the Grand Canal, and there were no corresponding documents and regulations. Now that the "Outline Planning" and relevant laws, regulations and policies are in place, various places have paid unprecedented attention to the canal, and the systems and management procedures have become more complete.

　　Today, the landscape along the canal is very different from 20 years ago.

The East Lake Scenic Area, located in the Shaoxing section of the East Zhejiang Canal, is only separated from the canal by an embankment. It is an important node on the East Zhejiang Grand Canal and the Tang Poetry Road. Photo by Ren Haixia

　　The Sanwan area, located on the bank of the ancient canal in the southern part of Yangzhou city, suffered great damage to its ecological environment in the 1980s and 1990s. In early 2010, Yangzhou City identified the planning and construction of Sanwan Wetland Park as an important livelihood project. In 2017, the Sanwan Ecological Cultural Park was completed and opened to the public. It has transformed from a "dirty and messy" land into the "kidney of the city" and has also become the site of the China Grand Canal Museum, an important landmark project of the Grand Canal National Cultural Park.

Aerial photography of the winter scenery of the Canal Sanwan Ecological and Cultural Park in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Photo by Yang Bo

　　The Beijing-Tongzhou section of the Grand Canal has also undergone tremendous changes. In 2022, the entire Grand Canal will be connected and all 62 kilometers of the Beijing-Hebei section will be open to navigation. "A river can only be called a canal if it has water." Sitting on a canal cruise, Ren Deyong, chairman of the labor union of the Tongzhou District Cultural Relics Management Institute and a member of the Beijing Grand Canal Culture Research Association, felt the connection with the ancients and thought of the sentence written by the Qing Dynasty poet Wang Weizhen: After the new rain, the shadow of a pagoda indicates Tongzhou."

Grand Canal, integrated into life

　　Around the canal, a unique canal lifestyle and unique canal culture have also been formed, affecting the people living along the canal.

　　Jiang Shili believes that the Grand Canal is the spiritual link of the country. "Our land is divided into pieces by natural rivers. This geographical feature can easily cause local governments to be governed by rivers and rivers. It is precisely because of the construction of canals that connected people in different regions. In addition to bringing economic exchanges, and more importantly, cultural exchanges.”

　　The role of the Grand Canal in communicating and exchanging the culture of cities along the route is reflected in many aspects, such as opera, literature, food, folk customs, etc. in ancient Chinese society.

　　Food culture exchange is an important part of the canal cultural exchange. Jiang Shili said that for a long time, the staple food of southerners was rice, while the staple food of northerners was wheat. From the Sui and Tang Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, due to the opening of the canal, wheat was widely grown in the south, and rice became more and more common among northerners. In the Dadu period of the Yuan Dynasty, rice entered Beijing from the south of the Yangtze River via canals and accounted for a large proportion of the food composition of Dadu residents.

　　According to Hu Mengfei, an associate professor at the Institute of Canal Studies at Liaocheng University, Beijing is one of the cities that has done a good job in protecting heritage along the canal. “The main reason is that cultural excavation and cultural tourism integration have been done well, and the canal culture has been integrated into the economic and social development along the canal. people’s daily lives.”

　　Among them, archaeological investigation and cultural relic protection work are the basis of cultural excavation. Data provided by the Beijing Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau shows that since 2020, the Beijing Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau has organized a total of 669 archaeological exploration projects in seven districts along the Grand Canal, with an exploration area of ​​approximately 47.54 million square meters. It has also implemented the renovation of Lumicang and the "Wanning Bridge" There are 229 cultural relics protection projects including "burden reduction", with a total investment of 1.27 billion yuan.

　　As a highly concentrated collection of human civilization, the museum is also an important carrier for the display and dissemination of Grand Canal culture. Currently, there are 169 registered museums in the seven districts along the Grand Canal in Beijing. At the end of 2023, the Beijing Grand Canal Museum will be opened to the public, with about 6,000 sets of cultural relics on display.

Beijing Grand Canal Museum's important architectural landscape water street. Photo by Yang Kejia

　　Mining cultural IP is equally important to spreading the Grand Canal culture. For example, at the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, the mascot "Chen Chen" was based on the Gongchen Bridge in Hangzhou, showing China's canal aesthetics and becoming a symbol of exchanges between China and the world; Beijing (Tongzhou) Grand Canal Cultural Tourism Scenic Area invited universities The team established an "inspiration library" with more than 1,000 maps, and chose China's water-repelling beast as an IP image to present in the scenic spot in the form of cultural and creative products and landscape sketches.

On June 24, 2022, a canal cruise ship was sailing on the Beijing section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. On that day, all 62 kilometers of the Beijing-Hebei section of the Beijing Airlines Grand Canal was opened to navigation. Photo by Yi Haifei

　　In addition, more cultural experiences are launched along the canal that allow tourists to "be there". The night cruises on the Beijing-Tongzhou section of the Grand Canal have become popular among young people. There are a total of 8 routes planned in the scenic spot, with the longest route being 12 kilometers. The number of flights has increased from the original 4 flights a day to 7 flights, including 3 additional night flights in the evening. According to Luan Xiaotian, general manager of Beijing Grand Canal Cultural Tourism Development Co., Ltd., the audience of daily cruises is mainly the elderly and family tourists. After opening regular night cruises and adding theaters and cruise concert venues, the needs of young people have been met.

　　"Historically, cities along the Grand Canal prospered because of the smooth flow of the canal, but also declined because of the interruption of the canal." Hu Mengfei said that cities such as Tianjin, Linqing, Jining, Huai'an, and Yangzhou were all built on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal during the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. When the entire line is unblocked, it develops rapidly, forming an economically developed urban agglomeration in eastern China. In modern times, the Grand Canal continues to have an impact that cannot be underestimated on the cities along it. (over)