Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal (Hangzhou Section) 京杭大运河（杭州段）

Welcome, everyone. Our journey along the Hangzhou section of the Grand Canal begins right here at Wulinmen Wharf. This is one of Hangzhou's key water transport hubs and the starting point for many visitors boarding a water bus or canal cruise. Look across the water — the modern skyline of Hangzhou rises on the far bank, while beneath your feet this broad channel has been flowing for more than two thousand years. Ancient waterway and steel-and-glass towers sharing the same frame: that contrast is very much the spirit of this city.

The Wulinmen area has long been Hangzhou's northern water-and-land gateway. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, merchant vessels crowded the wharf, bringing grain, silk, and tea from across the Jiangnan region to be loaded onto boats heading north. Grain transport by canal has long since passed into history, but the wharf is still part of daily city life — water buses call here every day, and locals and visitors alike can board and travel north along the canal, much as travellers did centuries ago.

If you'd like a good photo, head to the viewing platform on the northern side of the wharf. With the canal and the modern buildings in the background, you'll capture that striking contrast between past and present. Early morning and dusk offer the softest light, and on calm days the water gives you a clean, clear reflection. Next we'll be heading north — either by boat or along the riverside path — toward West Lake Cultural Square. Please stay with the group.

We've now arrived near West Lake Cultural Square. This is one of Hangzhou's largest urban cultural spaces, and along the eastern bank you'll see the Zhejiang Provincial Museum, the Zhejiang Natural History Museum, and the Zhejiang Science and Technology Museum. They may not carry the same weight of years as an old bridge or a historic street, but together with the canal they complete the picture of Hangzhou as a modern cultural city.

Historically, the canal carried far more than goods — it carried ideas. Jiangnan's painting traditions, opera, and craftsmanship travelled north with the canal boats, while new thinking and technologies flowed south in return. The site of West Lake Cultural Square was once the meeting point between the canal and the rhythms of everyday city life. Today it serves both as a leisure space for locals and as a window onto Zhejiang's history and natural heritage for visitors.

If you have extra time, I'd recommend choosing one or two of the museums on the eastern side of the square to visit. The Zhejiang Provincial Museum in particular holds an outstanding collection of artefacts related to Zhejiang's history and canal culture. The square itself has plenty of good spots for photos — the riverside walkway and the lawns are especially popular. Around dusk, the setting sun catches the glass facades of the modern buildings and sends a warm golden light rippling across the water — a wonderful moment for city photography. Now let's continue north to our next stop, Xinyifang.

Welcome to Xinyifang. This is one of the most celebrated waterfront commercial districts along the Hangzhou section of the canal — and one of the best places to feel the pulse of everyday canal life. The district runs along the riverbank and has kept a number of traditional features: waterfront arcaded buildings, stone landing steps, and old-style shopfronts. In the past this was a trading and unloading hub for goods moving up and down the canal, and the merchants who stopped here to unload cargo, do business, drink tea, and rest gradually built it into a lively marketplace.

Xinyifang today still has that energetic, lived-in quality. Both banks of the canal are lined with teahouses, restaurants, bars, and specialty shops. By day you can sit with a pot of Longjing tea and watch the boats go by; after dark the lights come on and the area becomes one of Hangzhou's most popular spots for a night out. The buildings are not ancient, but their scale and layout follow the traditional street pattern, and you can still catch a sense of the old canal trading town in the atmosphere.

Take a look at the stone landing steps along the water's edge. Those stairs reaching down into the canal were where boats tied up to load and unload cargo. On some of them you can still make out the holes where mooring ropes were fastened — traces left by generations of canal traffic. For photos, I'd suggest crossing to the opposite bank and shooting the Xinyifang waterfront — especially at night when the warm yellow lights are reflected in the water. It makes for a beautifully atmospheric Jiangnan shot. Next stop: Fuyi Granary.

We've arrived at Fuyi Granary. Built during the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, it is over a hundred years old and one of the largest and best-preserved ancient granary complexes surviving in Hangzhou. In its day it was paired with Nanxin Granary in Beijing as one of the two great imperial granaries of China. The warehouse buildings you see before you were deliberately positioned along the canal so that grain could be unloaded directly from boats into storage, then redistributed from here to the rest of the country.

The architecture of Fuyi Granary has some striking features. The walls are thick, the roof pitch is gentle, and the floors are raised — all designed to keep out moisture and insects and to ensure good ventilation, so that grain could be stored for long periods without spoiling. Without modern ventilation systems, the builders relied entirely on the intelligence built into the structure itself. Wide passageways between the storehouses made it easier to move goods and manage fire risk. Although grain is no longer kept here, the original layout of the complex has been largely preserved.

Here's a small detail worth knowing: the name "Fuyi" comes from a phrase meaning "wealth through righteousness," carrying the wish for full granaries and a prosperous people. The site has since been converted into a mixed-use cultural space for canal heritage exhibitions and contemporary art, and it regularly hosts shows and cultural events. When taking photos, try the narrow passages between the storehouses, or stand on one of the stone landing steps with the warehouse walls and the water behind you — the sense of historical depth in that composition is hard to beat. Our next stop is Xiaohe Straight Street.

We've now reached Xiaohe Straight Street. This is a well-preserved historic district along the banks of the Xiaohe, a tributary of the Grand Canal, and one of the best places to absorb the atmosphere of old Hangzhou neighbourhood life. The street is narrow, the lanes wind between closely spaced houses, and most of the buildings along both banks date from the late Qing and early Republican era — traditional Jiangnan-style architecture with white-plastered walls, dark roof tiles, and wooden doors and windows that carry many of the small, telling details of old Hangzhou.

In the past the Xiaohe was an important branch waterway, and small boats could pass through it to reach the main canal channel. Both banks became home to artisans and traders, and the district once housed soy sauce breweries, rice shops, cloth merchants, and blacksmiths' workshops. Today those old buildings have been converted into teahouses, bookshops, guesthouses, and creative stores, but the layout of the lanes and the character of the buildings have stayed much the same. Walking through here feels like stepping back into Hangzhou as it once was.

Have you noticed that most of the houses are built right up to the water, with stone steps leading down to the river from their front doors? That's a classic feature of Jiangnan watertown living — residents used those river steps to wash vegetables, do their laundry, and board or leave their boats. On some of the older houses the doorways still carry finely carved brick or wood reliefs that, though worn by time, give you a clear sense of the craftsmanship that once went into them. For photos, look for a small bridge or a waterside alley — early in the morning, before the visitors arrive, you can capture that quiet, timeless Jiangnan mood at its finest. Next we head north to Xiaohe Park.

Welcome to Xiaohe Park. This park sits at the northern end of Xiaohe Straight Street and was converted from a former industrial oil depot into a waterfront park. As you walk in, the first things you'll see are several large cylindrical oil tank structures. These tanks once stored fuel for the canal boats and the city's industries. Today they've been kept in place and converted into art spaces, a café, and a viewing platform — a model of how industrial heritage can be woven into contemporary urban life.

The design of Xiaohe Park is genuinely inventive. The designers kept the original industrial structures and existing vegetation, then added boardwalks, lawns, wetlands, and viewing platforms, so the park carries both the weight of an industrial heritage site and the open, easy feel of a natural landscape. A wide variety of trees and wetland plants have been established throughout, and the riverside path offers broad views across to where the Xiaohe meets the main canal.

This is a great spot for photos. The large oil tanks are the most distinctive backdrop — stand on the lawn below them or out on one of the boardwalks and you'll get shots with a strong industrial character. Come evening, when lights illuminate the outside of the tanks in warm amber tones or shifting colours, the mood shifts completely. I'd encourage everyone to linger here for a bit and take in how Hangzhou has turned industrial heritage into shared public space. Our next stop takes us to the heart of canal culture — Qiaoxi Historical and Cultural Block.

We've arrived at Qiaoxi Historical and Cultural Block. This is one of the most concentrated areas of cultural resources along the Hangzhou section of the canal, and an important window onto traditional Hangzhou craftsmanship and canal life. The district lies to the west of Gongchen Bridge and preserves a large number of traditional residences, shops, and lane layouts from the late Qing and early Republican periods. Walking the bluestone-paved streets, you're flanked by white-walled, dark-tiled buildings — many still with their original wooden shopfronts, carved window lattices, and old-style signboards.

What makes Qiaoxi especially distinctive is the cluster of specialist museums it contains. The China Umbrella Museum, the China Scissors and Swords Museum, the China Fan Museum, and the Hangzhou Museum of Arts and Crafts are all located here, forming a remarkable concentration of cultural institutions in a single district. These museums showcase the refined skill of China's traditional crafts and also reflect how commercial prosperity along the canal drove the growth of local industries. In the past, Hangzhou's umbrellas, fans, and scissors were shipped across the country via the canal.

Feel free to take your time here — one street, and you've seen a whole panorama of Hangzhou's traditional crafts. The district is also full of intangible-heritage experience shops, long-established stores, and teahouses where you can watch artisans at work making oiled-paper umbrellas, folding fans, and other traditional objects. Best photo spot: stand at the western end of Gongchen Bridge and frame the Qiaoxi waterfront shops and red lanterns in your shot — it captures the spirit of canal life beautifully. Next we head to the China Grand Canal Museum for a fuller picture of this waterway's history.

We've now arrived at the China Grand Canal Museum. This is China's first museum dedicated entirely to the Grand Canal, and it presents a systematic account of the canal's excavation history, engineering technology, grain-transport administration, and the profound influence it has had on China's politics, economy, and culture. After visiting, you'll understand why this waterway has been called China's ancient national artery.

The permanent galleries are divided into several sections. The first traces the canal's origins and development — from the Hanju Canal dug by King Fuchai of Wu during the Spring and Autumn period, through the large-scale north-south canal works ordered by Emperor Yang of Sui, to the dredging and refinements carried out across the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. The second section showcases the engineering technology: locks, embankments, bridges, and water reservoirs — ancient hydraulic infrastructure that still impresses today. The third section reconstructs the world of canal transport, giving you a clear picture of how grain, salt, silk, and other goods moved along the waterway, and just how important canal shipping was to state finances.

I'd especially recommend spending time with the full-scale canal panorama model and the reconstructed ancient vessel models inside the museum — they make the scale and purpose of the canal immediately vivid. The museum also holds many rare artefacts: structural components from transport vessels, tax office documents, merchant receipts, and paintings and sculptures depicting canal life. When taking photos, watch out for reflections in the glass display cases — angling your shot slightly to the side will help reduce the glare. After the museum, we head toward today's most spectacular sight — Gongchen Bridge.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've arrived at the highlight of today's journey — Gongchen Bridge. Built in 1631, the fourth year of the Chongzhen reign of the Ming dynasty, it is the largest and best-preserved ancient stone arch bridge remaining on the Hangzhou section of the Grand Canal. For centuries it has spanned the waterway, linking the east and west banks and serving as the most important crossing point on this stretch of canal.

Gongchen Bridge is 92 metres long and about 6 metres wide, built from massive stone blocks with a series of semicircular arches that give it a sense of settled, commanding grandeur. The name "Gongchen" means bowing in reverence to the North Star, reflecting the ancient Chinese veneration of celestial order and imperial authority. In the days of active canal trade, boats travelling south from the north knew they had reached Hangzhou the moment Gongchen Bridge came into view. The bridge has long been regarded as the symbolic gateway to Hangzhou's canal.

Look up at the stone balustrades and the carved inscription panel on the bridge. Despite centuries of wind and rain, the lines of the carvings remain clear. The bridge surface still bears the grooves worn by cart wheels and the smoothing of countless footsteps — real traces left by history. Standing at the top of the arch, you can look out over the entire canal, with the Qiaoxi historic district stretching away on one side and boats passing slowly below. It's one of the finest vantage points on the whole route. I'd suggest photographing from three positions: the eastern bank, the western bank, and the top of the bridge itself. Early morning and late afternoon give the best light, and the reflection of the arch in the water makes for a classic composition. Next we move on to our final stop — Canal Square.

Everyone, welcome to the final stop on today's Grand Canal journey — Canal Square. The square sits at the eastern foot of Gongchen Bridge and serves as a major public gathering point and visitor hub at the northern end of the Hangzhou section. Looking back from here, Gongchen Bridge arches over the water, the Qiaoxi historic district stretches along the bank, and the museum, old residences, and shops line up one after another — a complete picture of canal culture laid out before you.

Canal Square is not only a place for visitors to rest — it's also woven into the daily life of Hangzhou residents. The square regularly hosts cultural events, intangible-heritage markets, and festival performances, making it a lively window onto contemporary Hangzhou. Standing in the centre of the square, you can feel once again what the Grand Canal has meant to this city: not merely a transport corridor, but a force that shaped the city's spatial form, gave rise to a distinctive everyday culture, and left behind the buildings, streets, and living traditions we see today.

This is one of the best spots to photograph Gongchen Bridge in its full span. Stand near the waterfront viewing area and use a wide-angle lens to bring the bridge, the water, and the historic district all into one frame. Come in the evening, as the lights come on, and the glow of Gongchen Bridge and the Qiaoxi district reflects in the canal below — the sight is something special. And with that, our journey along the Hangzhou section of the Grand Canal comes to a close. Thank you all for joining us. We hope this thousand-year-old waterway has left you with a memory worth keeping. Welcome back to Hangzhou any time.