New 'Ancient Town' Rises Along the Grand Canal

Zhao and many other locals helped clean up and landscape the stone canal. He then became interested in suo yi. Now he gets paid to dress like an impoverished peasant, demonstrate how the garments are made, and pose for photos. He poses for free, but if visitors want to take a photo with him or wear suo yi themselves, the price is 5 yuan.

Old Zhao's tourist spot is called "Old Man in Suo Yi," where he adds some nostalgia to the tourist experience.

Every day, Zhao commutes 20 minutes from his village to the park. Nearby villages were once known as Qian Fu Cun, (literally Barge Haulers Village), referring to the men who hauled barges along the canal. At one time, many laborers worked for the canal, hauling barges, loading and unloading them, and working on board. Many other people did brisk business, selling food, supplies and services along the bustling canal.

They still do today. Like Zhao, many villagers work on construction projects along the canal and rebuilt the ancient town into a tourist attraction.

Great battle

The Battle of Tai'erzhuang (March 25-April 6, 1938) is famous in modern Chinese history and was the site of cruel, house-to-house urban warfare. It was an astonishing, against-all-odds victory for Chinese forces and a boost to national morale.

China's hodgepodge of many troops inferior in almost every aspect crushed elite divisions of crack troops superior in logistics, training, equipment and weaponry. The Japanese invaders had been considered invincible.

The story of Tai'erzhuang is taught in Chinese textbooks. The battle is depicted in many war movies. It's studied by war historians and tacticians and compared to the 1943 Battle of Stalingrad. There's even a Tai'erzhuang board game.

The town was eventually taken over by Japanese forces that ran the canal for a few years.

New 'ancient town'

But rarely do people outside of Shandong Province know anything else about the city. And even fewer know that it is part of the city of Zaozhuang.

The ancient town was recreated based on old records, maps, photos and interviews with old people like Zhao. The flourishing canal city of Tai'erzhuang once looked a lot like this grand and prosperous new town.

Some streets are filled with restaurants, hotels and shops of all kinds, as in the old days. Others contain rebuilt temples, churches, company buildings, canal administration and customs offices, as well as museums about the town and the canal.

Some ancient wharves have been excavated and preserved.

"According to records, at its peak the town never slept because traders from all over the country were busy loading, unloading and distributing products at the wharf," says Zhou Juncheng, director and canal expert from the Zaozhuang Bureau of Cultural Heritage.

Tai'erzhuang was once a tiny anonymous village, but after the canal branch, known as Jiayunhe, was dug in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), it quickly became an important regional traffic hub and wharf, he tells Shanghai Daily.

After the town was destroyed in the war, the canal also declined. "People today no longer know about its past glory," Zhou says.

Ming Dynasty officials and engineers dug the Tai'erzhuang canal to solve the problem left over by their colleagues from the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368), who mainly used the Yellow River and its tributaries in designing the water system.

When the river flooded or when silt accumulated, which was most of the year, the canal was impassable.

Repair, dredging, filtering and maintenance were very costly, labor-intensive and ongoing.

By some accounts, only 10 percent of all the grain needed was successfully transported along this stretch of the canal during the Yuan Dynasty; the rest was transported by sea, which was much riskier at the time, or by land, which was most costly.

In the late Ming Dynasty, officials and engineers decided to go around the Yellow River and they dug a new canal in Tai'erzhuang in 1593. It was expanded in 1756 to accommodate more shipping. The project was one of the dynasty's biggest hydraulic projects and a great feat of engineering.

As the canal was put into use, the tiny village of Tai'erzhuang became the first stop in Shandong Province for vessels traveling north.

Many traders took a break in the long journey before continuing on and Tai'erzhuang became a prosperous hub for traders from around China.

Outside the new ancient town, the canal banks are dotted with decrepit buildings - it looks the way the entire area looked before it was landscaped. People living along the canal dumped their garbage into it.

The polluted water has been treated and many residents have been relocated to new neighborhoods to make space for the ancient town.

Li Jingshan, 79, once lived by the canal with his entire family, including his three sons and their families. The Li family lived by the canal for generations before him and once owned a famous shop that sold traditional snacks to traders and sailors. Now he lives in an apartment building about 15 minutes' drive from the theme park. The building is one of many that house people who once lived by the canal.