This canal was opened in the fourth year of the Great cause of Sui Dynasty (AD 608) to facilitate military transportation in Hebei. Yang Di dispatched more than one million soldiers and civilians, covering more than 2,000 miles from Qinshui to Yu He (Yellow River) in the south and Zhuo Jun (now southwest of Beijing) in the north.
A section near Zhuo Jun was soon abandoned; From today's section south of Tianjin, it was isolated from Qinshui after the Tang Dynasty. After the Song Dynasty, it was called Yu He. Since the Jin and Yuan Dynasties, it changed its course many times until it was known as Weihe River in the Ming Dynasty, and the current was the same as today.
Yongji Canal is another important canal after Kaiji Canal and Hangou Canal in Yang Di. Yongji Canal was the main channel for the Sui Dynasty to transport grain in Hebei (Hebei Road, then north of the Yellow River and east of Taihang Mountain), and it was also the transportation line for transporting personnel and war preparation materials in northern operations.
However, times have changed, and the scene of "a hundred schools of thought contend, and Qian Fan competes for the ferry" can no longer be reproduced. The traces left by Yang Di's invasion of Korea have already disappeared in the long years, even lost in the ebb and flow of history.
The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is one of the canals with the longest route and the largest engineering quantity in the world.
1. The Grand Canal is a political river
The Grand Canal has been flowing for thousands of years, nourishing all the people, not only narrowing the distance between the north and the south of China in space, but also promoting the change of traditional economic zone and political geographical zone from the national strategic pattern, strengthening the stability of centralized politics and the imbalance of regional and local social development, and ensuring the smooth implementation of government decrees, political stability and national unity.
The Grand Canal is a military river.
The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which is wide, flat and has a long history, has always been an extremely important military strategic channel connecting the north and the south. In history, it has become the place and related area of major military wars at home and abroad for many times, and there have been many important wars along the route. Therefore, the canal has important military defense and logistics support functions, and is of great significance to the allocation and storage of national materials, especially the social stability and military rapid response capability in remote areas.
The Grand Canal is an economic river.
The Grand Canal, which spans thousands of miles, was once the main artery of north-south traffic in China. It has played an important role in the economic development and the establishment of market order in the north and south of China, which has brought prosperity to the towns along the route and formed the famous ancient canal economic belt.
The Grand Canal is a river of culture.
The Grand Canal runs through the north and south, connecting the inside and outside, and integrates six different regional cultural forms, including Beijing-Tianjin, Zhao Yan, Central Plains, Qilu, Huaiyang and wuyue, and breeds many cultural categories, such as garden culture, opera culture, craft culture, food culture and folk culture.