The city of Yangzhou has tried various means to strengthen the protection over the Grand Canal and draw economic inspiration from protecting and utilizing the Grand Canal culture.
The millennium-old Grand Canal runs continuously from north to south. The Shaobo Ancient Town of Yangzhou, lying in the middle of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, has been an important wharf on the Grand Canal since the Sui and Tang Dynasties to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is a must-have for water and land transportation from the north to the south, as is evidenced by the heavy water transportation there.
Approaching Yangzhou Shaobo Ship Lock, you will find the 2,500-year-old golden waterway is not getting old in any way. The vessels are busy, but the nearby rivers and coastal environment are clean and tidy. Many crew members have prepared garbage bags and garbage bins. The phenomenon of dumping domestic garbage directly into the canal is gone forever.
Last year, the ship throughput through the ship lock reached 310 million tons, indicating steady growth of the navigation capacity. In order to promote the ecological protection of the canal, the ship lock management department has regularly organized young volunteers to carry out environmental protection publicity by placing 40 environmental waste bins on the pilot bridges. Each garbage bin is printed with a QR code. The crews of the passing ships can scan the QR code to check the garbage collection sites along the Grand Canal.
The changes in the canal environment have also nourished the lives of the people along the canal. In the newly built canal ecological park in Shaobo Town, local villagers said that in the 1960s, it was once a weedy riverbank, and the river pond was contracted for fishery farming. In March 2016, the local government invested nearly 100 million yuan to carry out ecological restoration and renovation in order to protect the remains of the Grand Canal.
As the town with the largest number of remains along the Grand Canal, Shaobo Town has actively implemented the project of reclaiming lake by returning the farmland in recent years by organizing more than 300 fishermen to get ashore and live in resettlement quarters.
At present, Yangzhou has issued the "Measures for the Protection of the World Cultural Heritage of the Yangzhou Section of the Grand Canal" to strengthen the protection of 10 heritage sites and 6 river courses as well as ancient towns, ancient gates and ancient dams. It has also taken the lead in the province to plan and construct a 1,800-square-kilometer Jianghuai ecological corridor, to implement legislative protection for key ecologically sensitive areas and permanent green spaces, to launch 27 key ecological construction and environmental management projects, and to build a strong ecological security barrier for the Grand Canal.
In order to let more people know about the Grand Canal, since 2007, Yangzhou has held the "World Canal Cities Forum" every year to strengthen dialogue and cooperation on the protection, inheritance and development of the canal. The first Grand Canal Cultural Tourism Expo held last month has brought new opportunities for the high-quality development of the Grand Canal tourism.
The Grand Canal, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the longest as well as the oldest canal or artificial river in the world. Starting at Beijing, it passes through Tianjin and the provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the city of Hangzhou, linking the Yellow River and Yangtze River.
(Source:ourjiangsu.com)
