Restoring the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal

Gongshu District will speed up the reconstruction of the banks of the Grand Canal and the restoration of historic quarters in Qiaoxi area and around Xiaohe Street and Dadou Road.

Qiaoxi area, about 7.83 hectares, will have shopping, sightseeing and recreational facilities after its restoration is completed later this year. Traditional workshops will not only sell arts and handicrafts, but also let visitors get hands-on experience.

A Grand Canal research institute will be founded in Gongshu and dedicated to the preservation of heritage and cultural resources related to the canal that runs from Hangzhou to Beijing.

Meanwhile, the district is planning to convert the vacant Hangzhou Iron and Steel Factory into a Sino-French cultural and creative industry park and build a theater, a stadium and a sports park along the canal.

The Grand Canal was cut in Spring and Autumn Period and the history of the Canal is dated back to over 2500 years. With total length of about 1794km, the Grand Canal flows through four provinces and two cities, i.e. Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei Province, Shangdong Province, Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province. As the longest, oldest artificial canal with largest work quantities in the world, the canal is a great project built by ancient Chinese people and is the most important living and flowing cultural relic in human history.

Hangzhou Section of Grand Canal extends around 39km, starting from Tangqi Town of Yuhang in the north to Qiantang River in the south, and flows through four districts, i.e. Yuhang, Gongshu, Xiacheng and Jianggan District. In 2002, Hangzhou Municipal Committee and Hangzhou Municipal Government officially launched comprehensive renovation, protection and development of Hangzhou Section of Grand Canal with a purpose to improve and renovate water quality, landscapes, bridges, roads, ancient streets and ancient buildings along the Grand Canal. The cultural and leisure experience corridor and the golden water tour route with the natural eco-landscape stripe as principal axis, the historic block, cultural park, museum clusters, temples and nunneries, heritages and relics as key nodes, has been developed along the both banks of the Grand Canal (Hangzhou Section).