CHINA’S GRAND CANAL: LIFELINE OF AN EMPIRE

The original Grand Canal was the brainchild of Emperors Wen and Yang of the short-lived Sui dynasty (circa 589 to 618). They undertook a massive project of expanding and extending a canal system that linked the North China Plain to the Yangtze valley. As the world’s largest man-made waterway, the Grand Canal would serve as a means of integrating imperial China.

Emperor Wen chose Chang’an—the capital of the earlier Qin and Western Han dynasties—as his capital. It would become the medieval world’s greatest city. But Chang’an was a problematic choice for capital. The city had excellent connectivity to the land routes to central Asia and to China’s southwest, but it was less well connected to the Yellow River flood plain to the east and almost completely cut off from the south and southeast, especially from the flourishing Yangtze River valley.

To solve that problem, Emperor Wen expanded a canal originally dug during the Han dynasty in the 2nd century B.C.E. It stretched 100 miles east from Chang’an to the Yellow River. Emperor Wen started a second huge imperial city at Luoyang, which had been the capital of the Eastern Han. He then accelerated canal projects to link his twin capitals to the Yangtze River to the south and north as far as modern Beijing. 

The logic of the Grand Canal was simple. China’s two great rivers—the Yellow and the Yangtze—run east to west. North-south canals connect those two rivers and the millions of people that live along them.

Building the canal was huge project. It took over six years of hard work by millions of labourers. Emperor Yang was a tyrant. He forced millions of farmers to work on the canal. Many died during the construction.. However, the canal was finally completed in 609 C.E. China had a new waterway that would enrich the country for hundreds of years to come. 

It wasn’t just north and south that the Grand Canal connected. With its southern terminus at the seaport of Hangzhou, the waterway connected inland regions to the trade networks of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean. By the 8th century, there were Arabs and Persians living on China’s southeast coast and in Chang’an and Luoyang, and Korean merchant enclaves in the northeast and along the Grand Canal. In the 13th century, they were joined by Hindus, Genoese, and Venetians.

The points where the canal connected to China’s lakes and rivers— Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Yangzhou—would become some of the wealthiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The Grand Canal became an indispensable major highway for transporting grain, timber, silk and people and as a symbol of unification of this huge land mass.

To some extent, our land tour will follow the the 1750 km journey of the Grand Canal.

From: The Great Courses - Understanding Imperial China