The 1,794-km-long Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is the oldest and longest man-made waterway in the world. It stands together with the Great Wall as a magnificent and wondrous attainment of ancient China, linking the north and south by the waterway.

The canal was built section by section in different parts of China before it was linked together, with each section getting its own name.

The section in Beijing is called the Northern Canal; while the section in northern Jiangsu province is named the Middle Canal, and the total canal comprise the Eastern Zhejiang Canal. As early as the Song Dynasty (960-1279), businessmen from Korea and Japan traveled by sea to Ningbo, and then on to Hangzhou and northern Chinese cities via the Eastern Zhejiang Canal.

Grand Canal at Hangzhou now has been a passenger and freight shipping trunk waterway. It runs through a land richly endowed with pastoral beauty. Living along the canal is an honest and frank folk.

In 1988, a 7-kilometre canal was dug to link the Grand Canal with the Qiantang River. 

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