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The Grand Canal (China) [Our heritage]

The Grand Canal (China) [Our heritage #19]

Published on 19 January 2017 - Updated 22 February 2017
Cet article date d'il y a plus de 7 ans

International cooperation

The Grand Canal is a vast waterway system in the north-eastern and central-eastern plains of China, running from Beijing in the north to Zhejiang province in the south. Constructed in sections from the 5th century BC onwards, it was conceived as a unified means of communication for the Empire for the first time in the 7th century AD (Sui dynasty). This led to a series of gigantic construction sites, creating the world’s largest and most extensive civil engineering project prior to the Industrial Revolution.

By the 13th century it consisted of more than 2,000 km of artificial waterways, linking five of China’s main river basins.

Online:

Le Grand Canal (UNESCO)

Hosting a Chinese intern in the Loire Valley

In October 2014, following on from the diplomatic rapprochement between France and China, the French and Chinese Ministers for Culture signed an agreement to promote exchanges between the two countries in professional training regarding heritage.

In this context, between 5 and 9 December 2016, Mission Val de Loire hosted Ms ZHAO Yun, an engineer responsible for monitoring China's world heritage applications, at the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage (CACH). She was able to swap ideas with the Mission Val de Loire team about the preservation of a UNESCO site by drawing on their respective experiences, and to discover urban sites, châteaux and gardens in the Loire Valley.