The city of Yangzhou has spared no efforts to highlight its role in the protection of the Grand Canal cultural heritages by tapping into a national plan for the preservation and inheritance of the Grand Canal culture.
Yangzhou is the only city in the country that shares the same length of history with the Grand Canal. The document released by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council highlights the core position of Yangzhou City in the layout due to its important pivotal role in the strategic docking with the preservation and inheritance of the Grand Canal culture.
From a top-down approach, the document pinpoints the major projects for the preservation and inheritance of the Grand Canal culture. They include the relics of the ancient city, the mouth of the Yangtze River, the craftsmanship of the lacquer ware in the cultural heritage protection and demonstration project, the section of the Grand Canal in Yangzhou in the waterway resources improvement project and the Sanwan Wetland Park, Gaoyou Lake and Yizheng-Yangzhou canal in the green ecological corridor construction project.
The document also stresses the role of World Historic and Cultural Canal Cities Cooperation Organization and other associations to promote China’s image and showcase the Chinese culture on the world stage.
When it comes to cultural heritage protection, the Grand Canal of China is probably the world’s greatest project of its kind. The big inland waterway system in the north-eastern and central eastern plains passes through eight of the country’s present-day provinces.
The Canal runs from Beijing in the north to Zhejiang Province in the south. Constructed in sections from the 5th century BC onwards, it was designed as a means of communication in the 7th century AD. The Canal is the world’s greatest civil engineering project before the Industrial Revolution. The Grand Canal was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in June 2014.
(Source：ourjiangsu.com)
