Along the Grand Canal

In 2018, I published a book about my travels along the Grand Canal. The topic was not my specialty, but I have no regrets about getting interested in the Grand Canal. Instead, I regret not seeing even more of it. The topic is not easily exhausted. Instead, the more one reflects on China’s Grand Canal, the more it stands for something larger and important to the world as a whole.

What, exactly, does the Grand Canal represent? To answer, I will share a story about my regret. Canals—humanly engineered waterways for the transport of people and freight—are very old inventions in China. Indeed, China shares this commonality with other great civilizations of antiquity that, early on, they realized that rivers, lakes, and seas were not enough. Nature had to be assisted by regulating existing waterways and digging out flat channels between them. Hence, for over 2,500 years, China certainly had big canals, but not until the 6th century, in the Sui Dynasty (581-618), did the country have a “Grand Canal.”

I pondered this while on bridges in the province of Jiangsu, in the east of China. There is a false assumption that the Grand Canal is somehow entirely a thing of the past, but, in fact, it remains alive and functions well today. Indeed, it is so alive that it changes shape.

Let me explain. The bridges on which I was standing were near the city of Huai’an—a place worth visiting, by the way—a place that clearly derives its name from the important Huaihe River that flows alongside it. But the particular bridge on which I stood did not span the river as a whole. Instead, it crossed an old section of what is called the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. This started in the late 13th century during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) and was designed to carry food, goods, and people to the politically important but arid region in the far north. What needs to be emphasized is that descendants of the very same barges and boats that floated centuries ago continue to travel roughly the same path, and to a degree, for similar reasons.

As I stood on the bridge, I noticed that traffic was especially thick for the vessels headingnorth. They were bringing everything ranging from coal and iron to grain on the same time-honored route. I wish I could have traveled for a while on one of those ships and got to know the lives of their crews. By this, I do not only mean their working and commercial life; I also mean their artistic life. The boatmen and boatwomen who travel today’s Grand Canal are also expert horticulturalists. That is, they are really, really good at growing plants and caring for them. I know this because all the barges I could see—at least the ones with any pride—had elaborate gardens of potted plants in both the front and rear of the boats. These, to be sure, had some practical usage. They contained herbs and vegetables needed for the kitchen. However, if you look at the skillful way the garden areas are assembled, it is easy to see that a prime purpose is aesthetic. The waterborne gardens help make travel on today’s Grand Canal beautiful and create a refuge of calm in an otherwise hardworking life. I wish I could have sat in one of these gardens during sunrise or sunset.

The subject of art is directly related to a discussion of the Grand Canal. From the start, the Grand Canal has attracted the attention of local artists. In the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) especially, the Grand Canal was the subject of paintings and murals that combined accurate attention to detail in the landscape and society with imaginative touches that expressed the power of the canal and the beauty of life alongside it. This was because, for centuries, the Grand Canal was so important to Chinese civilization that it was a natural artistic subject. Artists sought not only to make it more beautiful, but also to convey the feelings it evoked. That is why the ship gardens deserve our attention. They are certainly pretty, but they also demonstrate that taking a closer look at the Grand Canal reveals a great many micro worlds.

Explaining those “micro worlds” requires discussion of a few more subjects. The first is physics. Long before people understood anything about friction or gravity, it was clear that it takes less energy to move heavy objects by boat than on land—assuming a waterway is smoother. Even today, on scale it typically costs less to move large objects by ship. Geography and economics also come into play. The Grand Canal, by reducing costs, was thus a way to link regions that otherwise could only be connected with much more difficulty. In my mind, the idea of a floating garden symbolizes this. A garden is something that stays in one place. Yet, being on the Grand Canal means it must also move. The Grand Canal is all about many regions both staying in place and moving together.

This brings up the last factor, which is biological. The Grand Canal is sometimes explained as an “artery” for China. The likeness is illuminating, but remember that arteries are more solid than they look. There are innumerable blood vessels moving in and out of them. Likewise, the historical Grand Canal had thousands of small waterways linking to the main channel. Each of them, like every stretch of the principal passageway, has its own stories and understanding of the people and things that go back and forth.

Today, all the municipalities and provinces along the route are in the process of renovating and restoring the Grand Canal. The total process will culminate in one important result: The Grand Canal will not only reclaim some of its historical character, but will also stay accessible to everyday visitors, foreign as well as domestic. I look forward to seeing how the many projects will turn out and link together. Yet, there is another aspect of this rejuvenation that Ihope never ends. As much as I wished, while writing my book, I could never speak to those who saw the Grand Canal of old. The traditional Grand Canal saw its last days in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). However, I could and did speak to those I considered to be creating a new Grand Canal—this time a globalized one. These are men and women across China who maintain the essential task of linking people, goods, and regions together. All of us should continue to speak with those who bring us together, economically, scientifically, and culturally. Appreciation for the role individual effort plays in the great webs that bind our lives into a diverse and vibrant global community is part of the legacy of the Grand Canal. I am always happy to learn more about how friends and colleagues in China are building new passageways, and I hope to someday finally ride on the modernized Grand Canal myself.

The author from the United States received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1995. From 2013 to 2019, he lived in China and worked as an associate professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. In 2018, he published the book Postcards from China: Travels along the Grand Canal. He continues to write academic essays on topics related to the globalization of education, the history of East-West exchanges, and new paths for cultural connectivity.