The Grand Canal

Yesterday morning Corrine and I took a long bike ride across town to see the Grand Canal. You may not have heard of the Grand Canal, but it is the world’s longest canal. Once over 1000 miles long, it stretched from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou, just south of Shanghai. Only the southern part of the canal is still navigable. The first section of the canal was finished in 495BC, but the full length was not completed until well into the 14th century. Still, it’s a pretty old canal.

This section of the Grand Canal runs just east of Yangzhou. It’s not outside of town; the city never seems to really end. The center of town is the older, more crowded part. The buildings are small, and the streets are narrow and overhung by trees. Toward the outside of town, the buildings are taller and newer. Not newer in the sense of bright and clean, but new in a dirty, unfinished sort of way, like a new subdivision with lots of mud and not enough trees. We passed some huge, ugly buildings – blank, imposing blocks of space. The streets are wider and more open because there are no trees. The sky is bigger but is gray and hazy.

One day I plan to ride my bicycle for hours until I find the end of the city, but yesterday we just went as far as the Grand Canal. A four lane steel bridge crossed the canal. The canal reminded me of the Mississippi River at a narrower part, and it was definitely as dirty. On one side we saw empty barges being scraped down and repaired. Other barges were being loaded with coal. On the far side of the river, a line of boats rested at the edge of the water. The boats were strung with clothes and household goods; obviously they were used for homes as well as livelihood. From inside one boat we could glimpse the bare feet of a sleeping man, and on another boat, a toddler played on deck, safely wrapped in a lifejacket. The people stared up from their boats in wonder. We looked down on them from our vantage point on the bridge and felt very far away.

(See more pictures at www.flickr.com/photos/ruthiemarie)