The culture of the Grand Canal is also known as "Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal Culture", but it is different from "Canal Culture". Because it refers to the culture of man-made canals around the world. The culture of the Grand Canal is a social phenomenon, which is a product of the long-term creation and formation of the Grand Canal since its excavation; it is also a historical phenomenon, which is the accumulation of the social history of the canal basin. It contains the political, economic, military, cultural and other national factors of several dynasties in China, and creates the history, geography, customs, traditional habits, life style, literature and art, behavioral norms, ways of thinking, values and other non-national factors of the multi-ethnic people in the Grand Canal Basin. It can be summarized in one sentence: the culture of the Grand Canal is a unique river culture centered on the culture of the Yellow River Basin and blended with the Haihe, Huaihe, Yangtze and Qiantang Rivers, and closely inherited from the culture of the Central Plains.
The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal is "China's second golden waterway (in the words of Zhang Youmao)", consisting of man-made waterways, some rivers and lakes that together form the Canal Culture Area ——divided into seven pieces: Yan-Zhao-Tong-Hui Culture Area, North Canal Culture Area, South Canal Culture Area, Qi-Lu Canal Culture, the Middle Canal Culture Area, the Li Canal Culture Area, and the Jiangnan Canal Culture Area (an important river channel excavated by Emperor Qin Shi Huang in Jiaxing, which set the course of the future Jiangnan Canal). According to the Book of Yuejue, Qin Shihuang "built two direct passages from Jiaxing, by water and by land, the waterway of which led directly into the Qiantang River".
The culture of the Grand Canal originated in the thirty-fourth year of King Jing of Zhou in the Spring and Autumn period, and continued to the end of the Xuantong period of the Qing Dynasty to the beginning of the second millennium AD of the contemporary era. The Grand Canal is a flowing culture, creating a flowing history with physical culture. Therefore the cultural history of the Grand Canal——a period of at least 2,400 years, longer than China's feudal dynasties——spans four social forms: slave society, feudal society, semi-feudal and semi-colonial society, and socialist society. The Great Wall, on the other hand, is frozen history. "The Grand Canal and the Great Wall should be sisters chapter on the heritage list," Liu Feng said; "If you add up the historical value, cultural connotation and contribution of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to China's historical development, it can be compared to the Great Wall to some extent." Experts Zheng Xiaoxie and Luo Zhewen said. The Grand Canal, together with the Great Wall of China, is classified as one of the four most magnificent ancient projects in the world, and is a great creation of the ancient Chinese working people and a large group of water conservancy experts who conquered and transformed nature. The Grand Canal is the earliest and longest man-made canal in the world. During the Spring and Autumn Period, King Fu-chai of Wu excavated the north-south waterway, Hangou Canal, which runs from Jiangdu (present Yangzhou) to Mukou (present Huai'an); it was completed in the Sui Dynasty, flourished in the Tang and Song Dynasties, changed its course in the Yuan Dynasty, and was dredged in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which is more than 2,400 years old nowadays. After the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the rise of north-south shipping, the opening of the Jinpu Railway, coupled with the migration of the Yellow River, the lack of water in Shandong, the siltation of the river, the north and south of the cut-off, the role of the Grand Canal is gradually reduced.
The culture of the Grand Canal is a "canal city cluster culture", a city cluster culture created by ancient Chinese agriculture, which is of a comprehensive nature. The excavation of the Grand Canal created a new environment, transforming several small and fragmented natural environments into a system and a humanistic environment. These include: new natural environment, new ecological environment, new production environment, new culture, new logistics environment, etc., which formed the famous "canal society and regional economy". Such as: the ancient " ship grain from the south to the north", "salt transportation" channel, the current " ship coal from the north to the south" trunk line, and contemporary flood control and irrigation main stream. Specific reasons are as follows:
（1）After the Sui and Tang dynasties, the canals led to the exchange of agricultural technology between the north and the south, the improvement of crop varieties, and the "circulation of commodities" in the agricultural economy that covered the widest range of Chinese villages in and beyond the canal basin.
（2）In the mid- to late-Ming period, capitalism sprouted in the Jiangnan Canal Zone, Suzhou and Hangzhou, where the commodity economy was well developed, directly stimulating the rise of the "Canal Commercial City Cluster": Beijing, Tianjin, Cangzhou, Dezhou, Linqing, Liaocheng, Jining, Xuzhou, Huai'an, Yangzhou, Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, Jiaxing, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Ningbo——merchants, traders, merchants, merchants, merchants, distributing goods——in this linear urban belt. Sui and Tang dynasties: Chang'an and Luoyang; Northern Song dynasty: Kaifeng; Southern Song dynasty: Hangzhou; Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties: Beijing——was the hub of the country. Canal economy is the "form", canal culture is the "spirit", form and spirit, intertwined with each other, to promote the soul of the canal.
The culture of the Grand Canal, "is a product of national integration (said Pan Chengxiang)". The culture of the Grand Canal can be divided into three levels: high-level culture, including architecture, literature, etc.; popular culture, referring to customs, rituals, clothing, food, housing, transportation and lifestyle along the route; and deep culture, referring to value orientation, i.e., the spirit of the nation that extends out of the Yellow River culture, which has long permeated the depths of the culture of the Grand Canal. Then, the Grand Canal culture, as a kind of living fossil culture, is bound to return the spirit of the Grand Canal into a kind of living fossil. Because it shares the same root and origin with the spirit of the Chinese nation. Canal high culture is a product of the fallen feudal era, while canal popular culture is rooted in the deep culture of the canal. The concept of deep canal culture is a custom or way of life that still survives in the canal folklore, the canal cultural sites, the ideal geographic location, the favorable economic conditions, and the humanistic environment:
（1）The Grand Canal was the most important area for successive dynasties——the political link of the Great Unification situation, harnessing the north and south, the political bureau total control of the whole country, and the maintenance of centralized power. The northward shift of the Sui and Tang regimes to the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, where the Great Schism never occurred, proves that the assimilative effect of the Grand Canal culture does exist. The culture of the Grand Canal, as a whole of the interrelationships of various regions through the ages, has shown a tendency of integration.
（2）The culture of the Grand Canal and the pluralistic and integrated culture of the Chinese nation promote each other. The culture of the Grand Canal is inclusive, unified, diffuse, open, cohesive and centripetal. While communicating material exchanges, the Grand Canal greatly chipped away the imbalance of regional cultures, assimilating and integrating multi-ethnic cultural differences with the Yellow River civilization as the center. As a result, almost all of the southeastern culture, Lingnan culture, Jiangnan culture, Qilu culture, Middle Earth culture, Jianghuai culture, Yellow River culture, Yanbei culture, and western culture were merged into the time and space of the long history of traditional Chinese thought. At the same time, the unique culture of the Grand Canal was also formed. The culture of the Grand Canal and its surrounding cultures have always been centered on Chang'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Hangzhou and Beijing. In other words, the culture of the Grand Canal is inseparable from its mother, the unified culture of the Chinese nation.
（3）The culture of the Grand Canal is "the sum of the material and spiritual wealth created in the practice of Chinese canal transportation (in the words of Zhang Youmao)". The ideology of feudal society and the economic system and canal transportation institutions that went with it made the Grand Canal culture a culture of ideology, which was deeply reflected in ancient politics and economy. Canal productivity contributed to the prosperity of canal culture, but canal culture had a certain ethnicity and was compatible with the ethnic conflicts of that era. For example, the Yuan Dynasty, a centralized regime established by Mongolian nomads who were not good at farming, used canals to transport rice from Jiangnan. For example, when the Northern Song Dynasty collapsed and the Jin Dynasty attacked the Southern Song Dynasty, the canal was used to transport grain and grass. No matter what, the culture of the Grand Canal always developed along with the development of material production in feudal society, and the culture of the Grand Canal always maintained the continuity of development and historical inheritance. Because the continuity of the development of the productive forces of the canal determines the continuity of the development of its superstructure.
（4）The culture of the Grand Canal has shared the same concepts and value systems with all Chinese peoples in all eras. The Grand Canal culture is closely related to the social life of each era, and without the society of each era there would be no Grand Canal culture. In the same society of the Grand Canal culture, the cultures were diversified and inconsistent, and "there also existed 'subcultural differences', which was one of the driving forces for the occurrence of the Grand Canal culture (Jin Xuemeng's words)". For example, the religious and cultural landscapes on the banks of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal were built during the Yuan Dynasty, when Tibetan Buddhism was the state religion. Canal culture, then, becomes a large and complex system of cultural symbols. The most important of the symbolic foundations of the canal culture is the common Han language and script, which contains a system of symbolic symbols such as image totems, living habits, rituals and customs. Therefore, the substantive meaning of the Grand Canal culture is an important field of study for social disciplines such as Chinese studies and Sinology. The culture of the Grand Canal, a window for the spread of ancient Chinese culture to the outside world, expanded China's influence on the world.
The culture of the Grand Canal is a unique "living" cultural heritage, and there are strict hierarchical divisions between the tangible and intangible culture of the Grand Canal (literature, geography, hydrology, art, history, institutions, politics, folklore, ethnography, food, clothing, shelter, lifestyle, behavioral norms, etc.). Material culture refers to all kinds of material civilization created in the process of excavating the Grand Canal, which is a kind of visible and explicit culture; the immaterial culture of the Grand Canal belongs to the invisible and implicit culture. The culture of the Grand Canal, rich in ancient information, is of great significance to the study of ancient Chinese society, geography, history, politics, economy, military, culture, science and technology, diplomacy, ethnicity and other fields, and is a Grand Canal Encyclopedia; it helps to study the traditional cultural concepts such as the lifestyles, behaviors, cultural attitudes and aesthetic values of various ethnic groups, and is a " Canal Museum". The latest edition of UNESCO's Operational Guidelines for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage attributes the cultural characteristics of the Grand Canal to the fact that "it represents the migration and mobility of human beings, the reciprocal and continuous exchange of multidimensional commodities, ideas, knowledge and values, as well as the exchange of cultures and mutual nourishment of the resultant cultures in time and space. " In short, the culture of the Grand Canal, a living fossil culture stored in the culture of the Grand Canal site.
