The 2,500-year-old Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, listed among
China's 100 top historical sites, has been playing a modern role as
a lifeline for fuel and other necessities for eastern Jiangsu
Province, which is still being affected by fog and ice.
Visibility was less than 100 meters in parts of the province on
Tuesday, according to the China Meteorological Administration.
Expressways in the province have been closed and re-opened
repeatedly over the past half month, due to the unusually severe
freezing weather.
Sources with the provincial transportation department said that
more than 90 percent of the coal needed for power generation in the
province had been shipped through the canal from northern coal-rich
regions, as road and railway transport systems were still
recovering.
"The canal is working at maximum capacity, with the current
navigating traffic three times heavier than the normally allowed
handling volume," said an official with the department. "Among
230,000 tons of coal consumed by thermal power plants in Jiangsu
every day, 219,000 tons were shipped via the canal."
The local maritime affairs authorities sent three icebreakers to
clear up the waterway, which was iced over in many sections. It
also conducted round-the-clock patrols to ensure that none of the
canal facilities were damaged.
Linking Bejing in the north with the southern terminus of
Hangzhou, the capital of the eastern Zhejiang Province, the
1,794-kilometer Grand Canal has 1,000 navigable km with four major
ports, each of which handles more than 30 million tons of freight
annually. The rest of the canal has dried up or stagnated.
The canal is the longest, oldest man-made waterway in China. It
dates back to the 5th Century BC and has served as a major
north-south artery after being completed in the 13th Century.
(Xinhua News Agency February 5, 2008)
