Shaping the Chinese Grand Canal
3 min readThe Grand Canal refers to the canal stretching from Beijing to Hangzhou. It was the main waterway channel connecting northern and southern China in ancient times.
Starting from Beijing, via Hebei, Tianjin, Shandong andJiangsu, and ending in Hangzhou of Zhejiang, the canal went through six municipalities and provinces to link up the five major river systems: Haihe River, Yellow River, Huaihe River, Yangtze River, and Qiantang River, at a total length of 1,880 km, as the longest canal of the world.
The earliest section open to navigation was the Hangou canal between the Yangtze and the Huaihe rivers, and the Southern Yangtze canal between Hangzhou and Zhenjiang. The 185 km-long Hangou canal was first excavated in 486 B.C. under the supervision of Fuchai, the king of the Wu state, channelling the Yangtze and the Huaihe rivers, while the Southern Yangtze was dug open fornavigation in the end of the Spring and Autumn period. The Grand Canal excavation during Sui dynasty took Luoyang of Henan province as the centre, with the Hangou and Southern Yangtze canals becoming the southern section.
Additional sections later, including the Guangtong canal (Chang’ an =Tongguan), the Tongji canal (Luoyang-Xuzhao, connecting the Yellow River and the Huaihe River ) and Yongji canal (Zhuojun Heyang, connecting the Tonghai River and the Yellow River), also took Luoyang as the centre and together served as the main artery of communications between north and south, accessible regionally northward to Zhuojun (present-day Zhuozhou of Hebei province) in the north, southward to Yuhang(Hangzhou of Zhejiang province), and westward to Chang’ an(present-day Xi’ an).
During Southern Song dynasty the Yellow River overtook the Sishui River course into the sea and changed the routing of the Grand Canal of Sui dynasty. In the section of Xuzhou of Jiangsu province, the Yellow river course was utilized for navigation and the section from Xuzhou to Jining of Shandong continued to use the Sishui Rivercourse. In the 20th year of the Zhiyuan reign of Yuan dynasty (1280), excavation of the Jining-Anshan (Jizhou) canal was started, so was the Anshan-Linqing(Huitong) canal in the 26th year of the reign (1286). The two canals were then together named Huitong canal by acronym. The northern Linqing made use of the Weihe canal for access to Tianjin, later known as the “South”canal, and the Tianjin-Tongzhou was then named”North”canal, mainly using the original river course. In the 30th year of the reign (1290), the Tongzhou-Beijing (Tonghui) canal was excavated. Starting from the Jishuitan lake in Beijing, now the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was consisted of the Tonghui River, South Canal, North Canal, Huitong River, Yellow River course for navigation, Huaiyang (Hangou and northern Yangtze), the Yangtze river course for navigation, and southern Yangtze canals. In Ming dynasty the canals were renamed the Bai (Tonghui and North), Wei, Zha, He, Hu, Jiang and Zhe canals. After navigation for successive 400 years or so, the Grand Canal was again re-coursed through additional excavation of the Suqian-Qingkou middle canal in the Kangxi reign of Qing dynasty to avoid the Yellow river silt, in place of the Yellow river course for navigation. At this point, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal separated completely from the Yellow River, except for its intersection at Qingkou, and became the present waterway for nearly 200 years.
In the 5th year of the Xianfeng reign of Qing dynasty(1866), at Tongwaxiang, Fengkao (present-day Lankao) of Henan province the Yellow River cracked the embankment, flowed northward into the sea, after overtaking the DaqingRiver in Shandong province. After that, the Yellow River no longer flowed through Anhui and Jiangsu provinces and changed its course in Shandong, where it intersected with the Grand Canal. As a result, the river disordered the original layout of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, with most project works becoming idle. Due to enhancement of on-sea shipping and the rise of railway transportation, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal’s communication role to connect the north and the south weakened, and the past navigation all along the canal also changed to sectional or partial navigation. After 1980,a large scale reconstruction was carried along the southern Shandong section of the Grand Canal. At that time,a 966 km-long navigation course, which spans three provinces vertically(Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang) and links up three river systems (Huaihe, Yangtze and Qiantang rivers), laid a firm foundation for the country’s strategy for the eastern line project of “Channelling the Water from South to North”.
