Qingkou Complex and Yangzhou Section of Huaiyang Canal

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Qingkou Complex

   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.

   Read the complete Qingkou Complex write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Qingkou Complex is where the day begins. Next is Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion.

2. 2. Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion

   Huai'an was a city made by water, and the water was money. Where the Grand Canal met the Huai river, and for centuries the Yellow River as well, the city stood at the most delicate junction on the whole waterway, a knot of channels, locks and dykes that controlled the flow of grain from the south to Beijing. The government posted an official here to supervise it, the Governor-General of Grain Transport, and the site of his headquarters, the Caoyun mansion, preserves the remains of that bureaucracy. It lies in the old Qingjiangpu district, and it belongs to the Grand Canal's UNESCO listing, which came in 2014.

   Read the complete Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion comes up about 37 km into the recorded legs. Next is Yangzhou Section of Huaiyang Canal.

3. 3. Yangzhou Section of Huaiyang Canal

   Gaoyou is a small canal city in central Jiangsu, set between two big lakes, and it has been a staging post on the Grand Canal for over two thousand years. The Gaoyou and Shaobo lakes lie on either side of the waterway, and the old canal embankment runs between them, a long ridge of earth and stone that carried the boats north and south. At this point the Huaiyang section meets the Yangzhou stretch, the part of the canal that ran from the Yangtze north to the Huai river, and it was one of the busiest stretches of the whole system.

   Read the complete Yangzhou Section of Huaiyang Canal write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 139 km into the recorded legs you reach Yangzhou Section of Huaiyang Canal. Next is back through Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion.

4. 4. back through Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Site of Caoyun Governor’s Mansion, late in the day. Next is Qingkou Complex.

5. 5. Qingkou Complex

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Qingkou Complex write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Qingkou Complex. That is the ride.