On an Ancient Canal, Grunge Gives Way to Grandeur

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July 24, 2007
Hangzhou Journal
On an Ancient Canal, Grunge Gives Way to Grandeur
By DAVID LAGUE

HANGZHOU, China — Until the early 1990s, crews on barges and boats chugging down China’s 2,400-year-old Grand Canal did not need familiar landmarks to tell them they were approaching the scenic city of Hangzhou.

They could smell it.

“The water was black,” said Zhu Jianbai, assistant director of the city government’s Grand Canal Restoration and Development Group. “There was no life in it. If you lived beside it, you had to live with the stink.”

“It was an embarrassment,” Mr. Zhu said.

But a $250 million makeover that began in 2001 has improved water quality and spurred urban renewal along a 24-mile section of this ancient transport artery that once connected China’s great west-to-east river systems, carrying the goods, taxes and official communications that sustained successive dynasties.

Today, small fish swim among the pylons supporting cargo wharves where effluent from factories and raw sewage from homes had poisoned this section of the world’s oldest man-made waterway. Walkways and parkland line sections of the canal, and some of China’s most expensive apartment buildings have sprung up beside it on what has become prime real estate. Water taxis connect historic piers and bridges along the winding route through the city where old shop houses and tenements are being restored.

Most remarkably, the canal no longer smells.

For a growing number of activists campaigning for the preservation of the 1,115-mile canal and its many cultural and historical sites, the success is an important step in reversing almost two centuries of neglect, during which long sections of the waterway that linked Hangzhou with the capital, Beijing, were abandoned or fell into disrepair.

“We can borrow from this experience,” said Zhu Bingren, a well-known Hangzhou artist who with fellow activists has called on the central and local governments to develop a comprehensive strategy for rehabilitating the canal. “It can’t be copied for every city, but a lot of experts are generally satisfied with Hangzhou’s method.”

The Duke of Wu began work on what became the Grand Canal in 486 B.C., but it was not until the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan moved the capital to Beijing and straightened the canal that it became a direct north-south waterway.

The canal’s main purpose was moving rice to the empire’s wheat-growing north, but it has carried far more colorful cargo over the years.

The wood used in building the Ming tombs on the outskirts of Beijing was transported down the Yangtze River from Yunnan and Sichuan provinces and then up the Grand Canal to the capital.

During the Ming dynasty, the bricks used to build the Forbidden City in Beijing were hauled up the canal from Jiangsu and Shandong Provinces. Even the craftsmen and artisans recruited from Jiangsu to build the sprawling complex that became the seat of power for the Ming and Qing dynasties arrived in the capital on the canal.

In 1790, during the reign of Emperor Qianlong, opera troupes from Anhui Province were ferried up the canal to perform in the capital. The troupes stayed on, and their melodies and performances, combined with other influences, eventually became Beijing Opera.

But by the beginning of the 19th century, the canal was in decline as a weakened Qing dynasty neglected maintenance and dredging. A major flood on the Yellow River in 1855 damaged the waterway and blocked it for more than a decade at a time when increasing amounts of cargo were being carried by sea and then rail.

Large stretches of the canal north of where the Yellow River meets it are now dry, filled in completely or heavily polluted.

“There is a lack of awareness about the canal,” said Luo Zhewen, an expert in ancient architecture at the State Bureau of Cultural Heritage and a leading authority on the Great Wall. “It is a living relic, not just something from the past.”

Despite the fact that the canal is no longer navigable between Beijing and the city of Jining in Shandong Province, about one-third of its length, the remaining section south to Hangzhou remains in heavy use.

More than 100,000 vessels ply the canal each year, carrying about 260 million tons of goods including coal and construction materials, according to figures released by the Ministry of Communications in March. That is three times as much cargo as is carried on the Beijing-Shanghai railway.

The economic importance of the canal is set to increase because the governments of Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces plan dredging that should increase shipping capacity by 40 percent in the next few years, according to official news reports.

There is no deadline for finishing the cleanup and restoration work, but by some estimates, the final cost could reach $2.5 billion.

Beyond the cleanup, Hangzhou’s ultimate goal is to persuade the United Nations to list the canal as a World Heritage site.

In late 2005, Mr. Luo, the Hangzhou artist, Mr. Zhu and a fellow activist, Zhen Xiaojie, wrote an open letter to the mayors of 18 historic cities along the canal calling for their support in seeking World Heritage listing.

They also successfully lobbied members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee, an advisory group to the central government, to back the move.

Their efforts are paying off. In March, the central government announced that a national group would be established this year to coordinate plans to identify important sites for preservation.

Local officials say the canal could become a major tourist attraction if it were ranked alongside China’s other famous World Heritage sites including the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven.

“The cultural content of the Grand Canal is very rich,” Mr. Luo said. “We should not consider it simply as a canal. If you just see it as a canal, it is not very interesting.”

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