Qingkou is the place where China's engineers tried, for centuries, to make two very different rivers behave. Here, near Huai'an in northern Jiangsu, the Grand Canal met the Huai River, and from the twelfth century until the middle of the nineteenth, the Yellow River also took over the Huai's lower course, bringing enormous loads of silt. The canal crossed this unstable junction, and getting boats safely across it, while controlling floods and keeping the water level right, was among the hardest tasks in the entire waterway.
The Qingkou complex is a group of sites related to that struggle: locks, sluices, embankments and guide walls, built and rebuilt through the Ming and Qing dynasties. The water control here was so important that senior officials were stationed in Huai'an, and the emperors Kangxi and Qianlong made inspection tours of the area. It is part of the Grand Canal's UNESCO listing from 2014, and gives a sense of how much human effort went into moving grain and salt along these channels. Today it is not a showy place, but a landscape of waterways, banks and old stonework, set among fields and villages.
Huai'an itself has a place in modern history as the home town of Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People's Republic, and its old centre along the canal has been restored. The countryside is flat, wet and green, with rice paddies and fishponds, and the roads are straight and busy with trucks and farm vehicles. Winter can be cold and damp, spring brings rain and summer is very hot and humid, so autumn offers the most comfortable days. Foreigners riding motorcycles in China should check permit and licence rules thoroughly before they plan a trip.
Huai'an, a large city about twenty-four kilometres from the site, has fuel stations, restaurants and hotels. The local cuisine of the Huai'an area is known for freshwater fish, crayfish and soft-shelled turtle dishes, and the lotus root soup is a gentle pleasure. Bring water, take a map with Chinese place names, and plan a leisurely day.