Early periods In the late
Spring and Autumn period, King
Fuchai of Wu (whose capital was in present-day
Suzhou), ventured north to attack the
State of Qi. He ordered a canal to be constructed for trading purposes, as well as a means to ship ample supplies north in case his forces should engage the northern states of
Song and
Lu. This became known as the Han or
Hangou Canal Hángōu). Work began in 486 BC, from south of
Yangzhou to north of
Huai'an in Jiangsu, and within three years the Han Canal had connected the
Yangtze with the
Huai River utilizing existing
waterways,
lakes, and
marshes. It linked the
Yellow River near
Kaifeng to the
Si and
Bian rivers and became the model for the shape of the Grand Canal in the north. The exact date of the Hong Canal's construction is uncertain; it is first mentioned by the diplomat
Su Qin in 330 BC when discussing state boundaries. The historian
Sima Qian (145–90 BC) knew of no historical date for it, placing his discussion of it just after the legendary works of
Yu the Great; modern scholars now consider it to belong to the 6th century BC. The new canal was to pass not
Xuzhou but
Suzhou, to avoid connecting with the Si River and instead make a direct connection with the
Huai River just west of
Hongze Lake. The Grand Canal was fully completed from the years 604 to 609 under
Emperor Yang of Sui, first by linking his southern capital
Yangzhou northwest to Luoyang by the
Tongji Canal Tōngjì Qú). He then proceeded to connect Yangzhou southeast to Suzhou and Hangzhou by the Jiangnan Canal and to connect Luoyang northeast to his war with Goguryeo by the
Yongji Canal Yǒngjì Qú). After this network's completion in 609, Emperor Yang was said to have led a flotilla of boats long from the north down to his southern capital at Yangzhou. This process again involved massive levies of conscripted labor and was detailed at length in the
Record of the Opening of the Canal Kāihéjì). Besides being the headquarters for the government
salt monopoly and the largest pre-modern industrial production center of the empire, Yangzhou was also the geographical midpoint along the north–south trade axis, and so became the major center for southern goods shipped north. from the
Yangtze Delta to
northern China. Minor additions to the canal were made after the Sui period to cut down on travel time, but overall no fundamental differences existed between the Sui Grand Canal and the Tang Grand Canal. By the year 735, it was recorded that about of grain were shipped annually along the canal. To ensure smooth travel of grain shipments, Transport Commissioner Liu Yan (in office from 763 to 779) had special river barge ships designed and constructed to fit the depths of each section of the entire canal. After the
An Lushan rebellion (755–763), the economy of North China was greatly damaged and never recovered due to wars and to constant flooding of the Yellow River. Such a case occurred in the year 858 when an enormous flood along the Grand Canal inundated thousands of acres of farmland and killed tens of thousands of people in the
North China Plain. Such an unfortunate event could reduce the legitimacy of a ruling dynasty by causing others to perceive it as having lost the
Mandate of Heaven; this was a good reason for dynastic authorities to maintain a smooth and efficient canal system. in the 10th century was done in response to the necessity of greater safety for the travel of barge ships along the rougher waters of the Grand Canal. The city of
Kaifeng grew to be a major hub, later becoming the capital of the
Song dynasty (960–1279). Although the Tang and Song dynasty international seaports—the greatest being
Guangzhou and
Quanzhou, respectively—and maritime foreign trade brought merchants great fortune, it was the Grand Canal within China that spurred the greatest amount of economic activity and commercial profit. During the Song and earlier periods, barge ships occasionally crashed and wrecked along the Shanyang Yundao section of the Grand Canal while passing the double slipways, and more often than not those were then robbed of the tax grain by local bandits. This prompted Qiao Weiyue, an Assistant Commissioner of Transport for
Huainan, to invent a double-gate system known as the
pound lock in the year 984. This allowed ships to wait within a gated space while the water could be drained to appropriate levels; the Chinese also built roofed hangars over the space to add further protection for the ships. Over a series of floods, this entirely shifted the river south of
Shandong,
capturing the course of the
Si River and emptying the Yellow River into
Hongze Lake and the
East China Sea for centuries. The Jurchen
Jin dynasty continually battled with the Song in this region. The warfare led to the dilapidation of the canal until the
Mongols invaded in the 13th century and began necessary repairs. A summit section was dug across the foothills of the Shandong massif during the 1280s, shortening the overall length by as much as , making the total length about and linking Hangzhou and Beijing with a direct north–south waterway for the first time. As in the Song and Jin era, the canal fell into disuse and dilapidation during the Yuan dynasty's decline. The Grand Canal as infrastructure has had influence on other architectural works in the west. The
Erie Canal in North America is designed and draws inspiration from the Chinese architecture. Many saw the canal as an economic advantage that could bring economic prosperity, like the canal and its benefits.
Matteo Ricci's Journals describes the canal in great detail documenting the economic prosperity. The pound lock is one of the more notable features of the
Erie canal that is directly connected to the infrastructure of the Grand Canal as it is used in other similar bodies of water.
Ming dynasty restoration (r. 1402–1424) restored the Grand Canal in the Ming era. The Grand Canal was renovated almost in its entirety between 1411 and 1415 during the
Ming dynasty (1368–1644). A magistrate of
Jining, Shandong sent a memorandum to the throne of the
Yongle Emperor protesting the current inefficient means of transporting 4,000,000
dan (428,000,000
liters) of grain a year by means of transferring it along several different rivers and canals in barge types that went from deep to shallow after the
Huai River, and then transferred back onto deep barges once the shipment of grain reached the
Yellow River. Chinese engineers built a
dam to divert the
Wen River to the southwest in order to feed 60% of its water north into the Grand Canal, with the remainder going south. They dug four large
reservoirs in
Shandong to regulate water levels, which allowed them to avoid pumping water from local sources and water tables. The only other viable contender with Suzhou in the
Jiangnan region was Hangzhou, but it was located further down the Grand Canal and away from the main delta. Therefore, the Grand Canal served to make or break the economic fortunes of certain cities along its route and served as the economic lifeline of indigenous trade within China. The scholar
Gu Yanwu of the early
Qing dynasty (1644–1912) estimated that the previous Ming dynasty had to employ 47,004 full-time laborers recruited by the
lijia corvée system in order to maintain the entire canal system. It is known that 121,500 soldiers and officers were needed simply to operate the 11,775 government grain barges in the mid-15th century.
Qing dynasty , draughtsman of the
Macartney Embassy to China in 1793. The
Manchus invaded China in the mid-17th century, allowed through the northern passes by the Chinese general
Wu Sangui once the Ming capital at Beijing had fallen into the hands of a rebel army. The Manchus established the
Qing dynasty (1644–1912), and under their leadership, the Grand Canal was overseen and maintained just as in earlier times. In 1855, the Yellow River
flooded and changed its course, severing the course of the canal in Shandong. This was foreseen by a Chinese official in 1447, who remarked that the flood-prone Yellow River made the Grand Canal like a throat that could be easily strangled (leading some officials to request restarting the grain shipments through the
East China Sea).
Modern China Because of various factors—the difficulty of crossing the Yellow River, the increased development of an alternative sea route for grain-ships, and the opening of the
Tianjin-Pukou Railway and the
Beijing-Hankou Railway—the canal languished and for decades the northern and southern parts remained separate. Many of the canal sections fell into disrepair, and some parts were returned to flat fields. Even today, the Grand Canal has not fully recovered its importance prior to the floods of the mid-19th century. After the founding of the
People's Republic of China in 1949, the need for economic development led the authorities to order heavy reconstruction work. The Grand Canal played a major role during
Mao Zedong's
Great Leap Forward as it provided an efficient way to transport grain. It was further refurbished following
Deng Xiaoping's
Reform and Opening Up, with improving economic conditions leading to greater infrastructure investment. The economic importance of the canal will likely continue. The
provincial governments of Shandong,
Jiangsu, and
Zhejiang undertook dredging intended to increase shipping capacity by 40 percent by 2012. The central government has also made the main route of the Grand Canal the eastern path of the
South-North Water Diversion Project, using enormous pumping stations to redirect water from the Yangtze Delta to the drier north. The canal became greatly polluted during China's industrialization. By the 1990s, canal barge crews could tell when they neared Hangzhou by the stench of the visibly black water they passed through. Similarly, fishermen on
Dongping Lake in Shandong objected to the introduction of water from the Yangtze as part of the South-North Water Diversion Project when they saw it noticeably killing fish and affecting their catch. During the 21st century, increasing efforts have been made to improve environmental conditions along the canal. Around Hangzhou, for instance, a $250 million restoration project begun in 2001 improved water quality to the point where it no longer produces a noticeable odor and is once again capable of supporting some fauna. On 22 June 2014,
UNESCO's
Conference on World Heritage listed the Grand Canal as a
World Heritage Site. In 2021, the
China Grand Canal Museum was opened.
Historical sections 's Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll Six: Entering
Suzhou along the Grand Canal dated 1770. As well as its present-day course, fourteen centuries of canal-building have left the Grand Canal with a number of historical sections. Some of these have disappeared, others are still partially extant, and others form the basis for the modern canal. The following are the most important but do not form an exhaustive list.
Jia Canal In 12 BC, in order to solve the problem of the Grand Canal having to use of the perilous course of the Yellow River in Northern Jiangsu, a man named Li Hualong created the Jia Canal. Named after the Jia River whose course it followed, it ran from Xiazhen (modern Weishan) on the shore of Shandong's
Weishan Lake to Suqian in Jiangsu. The construction of the Jia Canal left only of Yellow River navigation on the Grand Canal, from Suqian to Huai'an, which by 1688 had been removed by the construction of the Middle Canal by Jin Fu.
Nanyang New Canal In 1566, to escape the problems caused by flooding of the Yellow River around Yutai (now on the western shore of Weishan Lake), the Nanyang New Canal was opened. It ran for from Nanyang (now Nanyang Town, located in the center of Weishan Lake) to the small settlement of Liucheng (in the vicinity of modern Gaolou Village, Weishan County, Shandong) north of Xuzhou City. This change in effect moved the Grand Canal from the low-lying and flood-prone land west of Weishan Lake onto the marginally higher land to its east. It was fed by rivers flowing from east to west from the borders of the Shandong massif.
Huitong Canal North of the Jizhou Canal summit section, the Huitong Canal ran downhill, fed principally by the River Wen, to join the Wei River in the city of Linqing. In 1289, a geological survey preceded its one-year construction. The Huitong Canal, built by an engineer called Ma Zhizhen, ran across sharply sloping ground and the high concentration of locks gave it the nicknames
chahe or
zhahe, i.e. 'the river of locks'. Its great number of feeder springs (between two and four hundred, depending on the counting method and season of the year) also led to it being called the
quanhe or 'river of springs'.
Jizhou Canal This, the Grand Canal's first true summit section, was engineered by the Mongol Oqruqči in 1238 to connect Jining to the southern end of the Huitong Canal. It rose to a height of 42 meters (138 ft) above the Yangtze, but environmental and technical factors left it with chronic water shortages until it was re-engineered in 1411 by Song Li of the
Ming. Song Li's improvements, recommended by a local man named Bai Ying, included damming the rivers Wen and Guang and drawing lateral canals from them to feed
reservoir lakes at the very summit, at a small town called Nanwang.
Duke Huan's Conduit In AD 369, General
Huan Wen of the
Eastern Jin dynasty connected the shallow river valleys of the Huai and the Yellow. He achieved this by joining two of these rivers' tributaries, the Si and the Ji respectively, at their closest point, across a low watershed of the Shandong massif. Huan Wen's primitive summit canal became a model for the engineers of the Jizhou Canal.
Yilou Canal The Shanyang Canal originally opened onto the Yangtze a short distance south of
Yangzhou. As the north shore of the Yangtze gradually silted up to create the sandbank island of Guazhou, it became necessary for boats crossing to and from the Jiangnan Canal to sail the long way around the eastern edge of that island. After a particularly rough crossing of the Yangtze from Zhenjiang, the local prefect realized that a canal dug directly across Guazhou would reduce the journey time and thus make the crossing safer. The Yilou Canal was opened in 738 and still exists, though not as part of the modern Grand Canal route. ==Modern course==