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Canal city Yangzhou highlights UNESCO bid for World Heritage status
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AT a recent forum on “water ecology, water civilization and renowned cities,” the city of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, again pledged to protect its rich water resources and renewed its commitment to green growth.
The forum is part of the 2013 China Yangzhou World Canal Cities Expo that opened on September 26.
Since 2007 the city has successfully hosted six expos on canals. Water is a natural theme for Yangzhou that originated on “Han’gou,” the first section of China’s Grand Canal system built by a Wu Kingdom ruler around 2,400 years ago.
In ensuing dynasties, more canals were built in different regions.
When they were ultimately linked up, they become the epic Grand Canal, a 1,700-kilometer-long waterway connecting Beijing in the north to Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in the south. That epic project was completed at least 1,200 years earlier than the much shorter Suez and Panama canals.
In a country where nearly all major rivers flow from the west to east, the south-north canal provided a major artificial artery for traffic. It drew on existing rivers and lakes, many of them dried up or filled up today.
As Xie Zhengyi, Party secretary of Yangzhou, noted in his address at the opening ceremony, Yangzhou itself derived its name from “the rolling waves made by the rich store of water within its jurisdiction.”
In 2007, 35 cities along the canal decided to jointly apply to the UNESCO for World Heritage status, in effect, recognizing the entire water system that benefited China economically, militarily, politically and culturally. It was also a system for the exchange of ideas.
Milestone
UNESCO has never before recognized a water system; recognizing the vast Grand Canal would be a milestone for UNESCO. An office to coordinate the bid has been set up in Yangzhou.
A decision on China’s Grand Canal bid is expected to be made next June when the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meets in its annual session.
According to Xie, a panel of experts from the UNESCO World Heritage Center already carried out on-site assessments of the 132 proposed heritage sites and 43 sections of the canal in question, marking a milestone in the heritage bid.
While the Yangzhou section of the canal can be traced to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC), the main body of the current Grand Canal is more a legacy of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), with its capital in Beijing. At that time, the formerly nomadic Yuan rulers needed the grain from the south to supply the needs of the court, officials and army in the dry north where production had been much affected by prolonged wars.
As a pivotal city on the canal since the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), Yangzhou became an international trading hub where merchantmen from as far as Southeast Asia and West Asia came to trade.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), when land transport replaced canal transport, Yangzhou’s decline became inevitable. In 1936, Yangzhou’s population numbered only 120,000, around a fifth of that during the Tang Dynasty.
Water has always played a crucial role in sustaining the prosperity of not only Yangzhou, but also all the cities along the canal.
People first
By aggressively restoring or creating some canal-related projects and cleaning up local water systems, the city has made strides in becoming a habitable city putting the well-being of people first, especially the growing need for clean air and water, not just growth.
Yangzhou’s long history as a thriving trading hub has left behind a rich legacy of culture and folk customs that are still in evidence in the daily lives of locals.
As Tong Kangming, deputy chief of the State Cultural Relics Bureau, told the Yangzhou forum, the Suez Canal, the Panama Canal and China’s Grand Canal epitomize successful cases of human beings’ peaceful coexistence with nature.
The legacy of the canals have unique historical significance and social value.
As noted at the forum, seeing water as a vital element of nature and human life extends the ideal of perfect harmony between man and heaven as conceived in the Confucian outlook.
In this vision, water, rather than be a mere enabler of GDP, should enable us to live with greater dignity.
In this international year of water cooperation, it is urgent to achieve a consensus on how to address and protect water in future development.
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