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The Great Canal is the main artery of a
wide and labyrithical system of canals that covers the whole area of
China, more in the water-rich south than in the north. Since earliest
times, water works were essential for the production of agricultural
products in Chinese polities, taming rivers that were able to innundate
large strips of land annually was an essential task for the leaders of
communities. The myth of the "Tribute of Yu" (Yu gong
禹貢) who redirected the rivers of all "Nine Provinces" (Jiuzhou 九州) of
China shows the importance of irrigation for the survival of mankind.
navigable rivers (he 河, du 瀆) and canals (qu 渠, gou 溝) were not only used for irrigating the fields or to drain water from swampy areas, but also as a means of transport (caoyun
漕運). Throughout history water transport was the cheapest and most
convenient way to shift wares, commodities, taxes or persons from one
region to another. Still today, the rivers and canals of southern China
are bustling with traffic, hundreds or even thousands of ships pass
large sluices and passages in one single day.
The oldest canalisation projects were undertaken during the Spring and Autumn period
春秋, especially by the southern states of Chu 楚 (Jiang-Han Canal 江漢運河)
and Wu 吳 (Lake Taihu 太湖 area: the old Jiangnan Canal 古江南河, the Han
Canal 邗溝, and the He Canal 菏水 or Shen Canal 深溝) during the 6th and 5th
centuries, but also by states located near the Yellow River (Huanghe
黃河), like Wei 魏 that connected the fields around the capital Daliang 大梁
to the water sources of the Yellow River with the Hong Canal 鴻溝. The
most important canal of the Qin period 秦 is
the famous Lingqu canal 靈渠 that connects the two river systems of the
Yangtse (Changjiang 長江) and the Pearl River 珠江 and makes it possible to
transport commodities from central China to the south (see map of Qin). This canal is located near Xing'an 興安/Guangxi and is still in use today. During the Han period
漢, canals around the capitals Chang'an 長安 (modern Xi'an 西安/Shaanxi) and
Luoyang 洛陽 (modern Luoyang/Henan) were built, along the Wei River 渭水
and in the east as Langdang 蒗蕩渠 and Junyi Canals 浚儀渠, but also in the
Huai River 淮水 region towards the southeast. Cao Cao 曹操, warlord of the
late Eastern Han 東漢, continued to undertake canal projects in the area
he controlled, the later empire of Cao-Wei
曹魏. Some of his projects, like the Suiyang Canal 睢陽渠, contributed as
pipeline of logistics during his wars against his opponents. Cao Cao is
credited with the construction or installation of six canal systems,
and his successor Cao Pi 曹丕 (Emperor Wei Wendi 魏文帝) continued the work of his
father, especially in the region from the capital Luoyang southeast
along the Rivers Ru 汝水 and Ying 穎水. It was especially this area called
Jiang-Huai 江淮 that should experience intensive waterworks in the
subsequent centuries. In the southeast (Jiangnan region 江南), the old
canal systems around Lake Taihu were expanded, and waterways reached
from Guiji 會稽 (modern Shaoxing 紹興/Zhejiang) to Zhenjiang 鎮江 (modern
Zhenjiang/Jiangsu), like Sun Quan's 孫權 Pogang Canal 破崗瀆 or the Dantu Waterway 丹徒水道 that was enlarged under the Eastern Jin 東晉 emperors.
Most of the capitals of Chinese dynasties were located in the north,
either in the region "within the pass" (Guanzhong 關中, Guannei 關內) like
Chang'an , in the Yellow River area (the Central Plain, Zhongyuan 中原)
like Luoyang or Kaifeng 開封 (modern Kaifeng/Henan), or far in the north,
like Beijing. All these capitals were located in an environment where
agricultural production was not high enough to support the need of a
metropolis with a million inhabitants. To solve this problem that had
aggravted during the period of southern-northern division (Nanbeichao 南北朝), Emperor Yangdi 隋煬帝 of the Sui Dynasty
隋 was the first to undertake a project that should facilitate the
transportation of tax-grain and other commodities from the natural
granary in the Yangtse Delta to the capital in the north.
In 587, shortly before the conquest of the southern state of Chen
陳, Sui engineers dug a canal called Shanyangdu 山陽瀆 or Hangou 邗溝 that
reached from the Huai River area southwards to the lower course of the
Yangtse River, crossing some natural lakes and older canals and the
later Southern Capital of Sui, Jiangdu 江都 (modern Yangzhou 揚州/Jiangsu).
Yuwen Kai 宇文愷 was the engineer who dug a navigable canal from the
capital Daxing 大興 (i.e. Chang'an) along the Wei River to the Yellow
River, a canal called Yongtongqu 永通渠 that was finished in 604. One year
later, when Luoyang was determined to serve as Eastern Capital, a very
long canal was dugged that linked the Yellow River with the River Luo
洛水 and again the Yellow River with the Huai River area, passing the
Rivers Bian 汴河 and Qi 蘄水. This canal was called Tongjihe 通濟河. In 608,
the Yongji Canal 永濟河 was engineered, a waterway that linked the middle
course of the Yellow River in the area or River Qin 沁水 with the region
of modern Beijing. To support the campaign against Koguryo, these
canals were of great importance because the support of the troops
proved to be much easier through the convenient waterways. In 610 the
southern branch of the great canal (called caoyunhe 漕運河
"transport river") was stretched more south to Yuhang 余杭 (Lin'an 臨安;
modern Hangzhou 杭州/Zhejiang). To bypass the Sanmen Cliffs, in 742 a
canal was dug out that should facilitate the transportation from the
Yellow River up to the capital Chang'an, called New Kaiyuan Canal 開元新河
or Tianbao Canal 天寶河.
These imperial canals had to be maintained accurately
otherwise they would be silt up. Large parts of these canals are still
in use today. Being wide 40 paces (some 30 ms), both sides were flanked
with streets that were covered with shady trees. Grain harvested in the
south was not totally shipped to the north but often stored in
granaries (cang 倉) located along the canal. The most important
was the Changping Granary 常平倉 (near modern Sanmenxia 三門峽/Shanxi). The
total length of this imperial canal system mounted up to 2500 kms, it
connected the most important river systems and the largest cities of
China. During the apogée of the Tang period
唐, an annual volume of 200.000 metric tons of grain was transported to
the north. This line of supply could only function as long as the
central government was able to control the whole empire. As soon as
there were uprisings or rebellions that affected a part of the canal,
the grain and commodities supply to the capital was endangered. This
was especially the case from the mid-8th century with the uprising of An Lushan 安祿山 and through the whole 9th century until the foundation of the Song empire 宋 in 960.
The Song capital Kaifeng, located at the River Bian, had direct access
to the old canal system and profited from this connection. But as the
River Bian was linked with the silt-rich Yellow River, regular
maintaining of this northern branch of the canal was necessary. Water
circulation between the two river systems was regulated by sluices. The
connection of the canal system with the north was interrupted during
the Song period: the north of China belonged to another state, first
the Khitan empire of Liao 遼, later the Jurchen empire of Jin
金. That does not mean that those canals totally lost their worth for
local transport, on the contrary, during the wars between Southern Song
南宋 and the Jurchen, large troops were shipped along the canals to the
frontier and the battlefields, and large warships were dispatched to
the theatres. The Northern and Southern Song governments did their best
to improve waterways between the main river systems and to dig out
alternative routes along the rivers Ying, Ru, Min 閔水 and Cai 蔡河
resulting in the canal system called Huimin Rivers 惠民河, and in a track
leading to the east and called Guangji River 廣濟河. This canal started -
or ended - directly inside the capital with a branch called Jinshui
金水河. When the Jurchen conquered Kaifeng in 1126 they took over the
canal system of the (Northern) Song and even extended it to and around
their old capital in modern Beijing, the most important branch of the
Jurchen canals was that from the Yellow River to the north, called Yuhe
御河 - "Imperial Canal".
A new age for the imperial transport canal system as a whole complex began with the unification of China under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty
元. Their capital Dadu 大都 (modern Beijing) being in the north, it was
far essential to built up a supply line for this new metropolis with
its cosmopolitan character (like once Chang'an in the west). The
regions of the west had lost their importance, and it was hence not
necessary to stretch out the canal system along the Yellow River west
to old Luoyang and Chang'an. The Mongols thus had dug out shortcut
between Kaifeng and Dadu, a waterway called Jizhouhe 濟州河 engineered in
1276, reaching from Shandong to the mouth of the Yellow River from
where ships had to go along the shore of the Gulf of Bohai Sea 渤海 and
again entered a canal near present-day Tianjin. The silted Yellow River
mouth later was impossible to ship, and the transports were directed
along an inland-waterway directly into the Jurchen period "Imperial
Canal" that lead to Dadu. The Jizhou Canal was a few years later (1289)
replaced by an undertaking that resulted in the Huitong Canal 會通河.
Around the capital herself, the Tonghui Canal 通惠河 connected the
imperial granaries with the port of Tianjin and further to the east, a
project proposed by Guo Shoujing 郭守敬. The canal system of the Yuan
period engineers reaching from Hangzhou to Beijing was perpetuatuated
by the Ming 明 and Qing 清 administrations.
There were two main obstacles of the Great Canal
during the Qing period: the first was the part running through Shandong
province, called Huitong Canal 會通河, where it was difficult to keep
enough water inside the canal to be navigable. Intensive waterworks for
the erection of dams and dykes were necessary as well as prohibitions
for the population of this area to make unrestricted use of the
reservoirs, creeks and other sources of water supply. Far more
complicated was the route in Jiangsu province, called Liyun Canal 里運河.
This part of the canal crossed many different water systems, like the
southern branch of the Yellow River (that was flowing south of the
Shandong peninsula at that time), the River Huai, different lakes like
Lake Hongze 洪澤湖, the Yangtse, and finally the sea. It was especially
the floodings of the Yellow River that often caused annual inundations
that resulted in a vast lake covering the whole north of Jiangsu
province (Jiangbei 江北). It was Jin Fu 靳輔 who undertook intensive works
of repair in this area in the years between 1677 through 1683. Sluices (zha 閘), dams (ba 壩, ti 堤) and reservoirs (handong 涵洞, tan
潭) helped to mitigate the assaults of the floods. When the Yellow River
broke its dams in 1855 and changed course northwards, this catastrophy
finally ended the connection of the water transport system from the
Yangtse delta north to Beijing. Nonetheless, the southern part of this
canal system is still intact today and is one of the main transport
means for regional economy and commerce.
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