Gary Gui is an astute international business man who has for some time lived in and operated a factory in Hangzhou China. When I asked him to show me China's 1,500-year-old Grand Canal, for which Hangzhou is the southern terminus, he hired a guide to find it. This lack of knowledge of the 1,795-kilometre-long canal that stretches from Hangzhou northward to Beijing is not unusual in a country where the new generates more excitement than the old. And when "old" is the topic, an ancient garden will trump an industrial canal every time.
In Europe, the Rhine-Danube system linking Rotterdam on the North Sea with Sulina on the Black Sea is longer at 3,500 kilometres. But this system, running at a diagonal across Europe and finally completed in 1992, utilises three extensive natural river systems, the Rhine, Mains, and Danube. So the Grand Canal's claim to being the longest and oldest canal is indisputable.
China's major rivers flow from the western mountains to the eastern seaboard. These include the Yangtze, Yellow, Huaihe, Haihe, and Quiantang Rivers. The early development of the canal, beginning 2,500 years ago in the Wu Dynasty, began linking some of these natural waterways. But it was not until Emperor Yangdi of the Sui Dynasty initiated six years of digging, between 605 and 610 AD, that vessels were able to transit the full distance from Hangzhou to Beijing.
As with the canals of Great Britain and some many other countries, the advent of railways and motor vehicles reduced the importance of inland waterways in the nation's transportation system. Today reports are that much of the northern sections of the Grand Canal have fallen into disuse and have silted up so that commercial vessels can no longer find passage. However, the southern sections that I visited in April 2009 are spectacularly active. Powered and towed barges extend bow to stern over much of the route.
I began my visit along the canal at its junction in Hangzhu with the Qiantang River where a lock was busy with the passage of barges and the occasional passenger or patrol vessel. The lock serves an important function in protecting the canal from the river's tides that can rise five metres and are noted for a spectacular tidal bore that can travel at 40 kilometres per hour.
But on the canal side of the lock all remains calm with a broad walkway leading over ten kilometres through the city to the three arches of the famous Gongchen Bridge. While most of the bridges that cross the main canal are modern spans, this bridge, built in 1631, retains the classic form. But the commercial marine traffic passing between its guardian figures is a line of modern welded steel barges. These include a mix of powered and towed barges although the powered type seems to be in the majority. One chain of barges passing through the Gongchen Bridge in late April included 14 barges with a tug towing from the head and a much smaller vessel serving as a tail boat. The small assist tug, usually with an open cabin, is towed and is only manned when extra manoeuvring assistance is required.
The tow will move with other barges from the Gongchen Bridge north along the canal through Zhejiang Province to Jiaxing. Near this city, on one of the many interlinking minor canals of the province, is the remarkably preserved water village of Wuzhen. This offers a glimpse of canal life, as it would have been a century ago. Tourists are taken along the smaller canals in skulled wooden boats while nearby the stream of north and southbound steel barges flows like traffic on a terrestrial highway.
About 135 kilometres up the Grand Canal from the lock at Hangzhu, I stopped in the ancient canal city of Suzhou where we met bargeman Liu Yan Qiang and his wife Hu Yong who, together with their five-year-old son Liu Yi Bin, manage one of the barges in a long string that was moored to the bank there. Mr Liu explained that the barge that he rides and manages is an average size with a 960-tonne cargo capacity and is 48 by nine metres overall with a 2.8-metre draught. While not the owner, he estimated that the barge would cost about 500,000 Yuan (US$73,000) to purchase. Mr Liu and his wife, who also have an 11-year-old daughter at school in their hometown, earn about 20,000 Yuan (US$3,000) per year.
While the Grand Canal has contributed much to the city of Suzhou since ancient times, there is no question of the importance that the city gives to it even today. While super highways link the city to Shanghai less than 100 kilometres to the east, the hundreds of barges each carrying about 1,000 tonnes of freight pass north and south through the city each day. Cargoes range from aggregates, to bagged rice, steel coils, bricks and, in specialised powered tank barges, concrete and petroleum.
Skirting the great shallow Lake Tai, the Grand Canal continues northward through the city of Wuxi and on to meet the Yangtze at Zhenjiang. Another set of locks controlling water levels between the Yangtze River and the southern section of the Grand Canal has been installed near Zhenjiang. Located about 250 kilometres up river from Shanghai, the twin locks use the double gate pound system, invented on the Grand Canal in 984, that is today in common use through out the world.
Both sets of locks were busy with traffic. Most of the boats are painted a dull, almost military green with some having wheelhouses aft and others with forward wheelhouses, but all have impeccably tidy living quarters. A power barge with a bright blue wheelhouse and a full load of new bricks stood out from the others as it entered the lock chamber. A little boy tottered around the deck and up onto the cargo. His father, Chai Hai Jian, kept a wary eye on him and explained that the 35 by 6.6-metre boat was carrying a 300-tonne cargo and was powered by a single 164kW engine. Such a vessel, Mr Chai explained, would cost about 400,000 Yuan to buy and had earned him and his wife about 100,000 Yuan in 2008. This year rates were down but in the first four months of 2009 the boat had managed to earn 35,000 Yuan. To maintain this level of income the owner/operator would run continuously for 350 days per year. Margins are tight on the Grand Canal.
Entry into the Yangtze River gives the canal vessels access up and down the river to a huge territory. For those that cross the river and re-enter the canal on the north side near the city of Yangzhou, there are reportedly another 400 kilometres of canal navigable to the larger canal boats. But first they must pass through another lock that in late April of 2009 would raise them two metres from the river's level. One of the power barges getting the lift was a 45 by nine-metre craft with an 850-tonne cargo on board that took the draught down to five metres. The bargeman explained that he would be able to pass up through the canal with this draught but in the dry season this section of the canal was limited to a 4.6-metre draught. We were told that in the next 400 kilometres there are ten lift locks each raising the barges about three metres for a total lift of 30 metres.
Also in the locks was a 205kW tug with ten barges in tow and accompanied by an open 30kW assist boat. Each of the barges was 40 by eight metres and carried about 700 tonnes each. The replacement cost of the tug was reported to be about 500,000 Yuan while a barge could be purchased for about 400,000 Yuan.
A typical crew on a powered barge will be a husband and wife although grandfathers and children are often on board for shorter or longer periods. This is very much a family business and adult children will often serve an apprenticeship before taking on their own vessel. There seems to be a mix of owner-operators and those who operate for absentee owners. It is very much a way of life for the families. Owner Zou Hong Xi, who was coming through the locks with his wife on their 47 by 8.8-metre power barge explained that he and his wife take time off only for the annual ten-day spring festival. Their boat with its 750-tonne cargo was one of a minority of vessels that has twin engines. In this case a pair of 112kW diesels. These modest power plants allow the vessel to cruise at 13 kilometres per hour.
The locks at Yangzhou were busy with lines of vessels waiting to pay the 0.6 Yuan per tonne to pass through the lock. The growth of traffic is such that a third lock was under construction alongside the two existing locks. It is tempting to speculate on eventualities should China continue to upgrade the Grand Canal and its related infrastructure. At what point will investors see an advantage of finishing some of the larger 110 and 135-metre inland waterway hulls currently built in China for export to Europe for completion? Would the increased cargo capacities be justified by the increased capital cost of such vessels? It seems likely that, in spite of China's growing highway and rail road infrastructure, the foresight of the emperors who built the Grand Canal 1,500 years ago is as relevant in modern China as it was in ancient China.
Alan Haig-Brown
