The Grand Canal of China is the longest artificial waterway in the world, a chain of channels linking Beijing in the north with Hangzhou in the south, and the section through Si County in northern Anhui is part of its oldest and most important layer. The Tongji Canal, built in the early seventh century under the Sui dynasty, linked the Yellow River with the Huai and eventually the Yangtze, and made it possible to move grain and troops from the rich south to the capital. Hundreds of thousands of labourers are said to have dug it, and the project was so costly that it contributed to the collapse of the dynasty.
The Si County stretch has been excavated by archaeologists, who found the remains of the old channel, a lock, embankments and traces of a port town, and it was part of the group that UNESCO inscribed in 2014 as the Grand Canal. What you see on the ground is quiet and modest: a wide, shallow depression running across flat farmland, and perhaps a stretch of water with reeds and willows. That modesty is the point, because the real importance lies in what it made possible.
The land is the great northern plain, flat, fertile and densely cultivated, with wheat in winter and maize in summer, villages of brick houses, and rows of poplars along the roads. The sky is wide and often hazy, and the climate has hot, humid summers and cold, dry winters. Spring and autumn are the most pleasant seasons.
A note on getting here. Riding in China is tightly controlled, and foreign riders face licensing and registration hurdles that make independent touring difficult, so most visitors come by car or train and take a taxi from the county town. The roads in the area are flat, straight and busy with trucks, with expressways and local roads in good condition. It is a place for those who are interested in how a country was built, rather than for scenery.