Notable Travellers
In 1169, with China divided between the Jurchen-led Jin Dynasty in the north and the Southern Song dynasty in the south, the Chinese emperor sent a delegation to the Jurchen to wish their ruler well for the New Year. A scholar-official named Lou Yue, secretary to the delegation, recorded the journey, much of which was made upon the Grand Canal, and submitted his Diary of a Journey to the North to the emperor on his return.
In 1170 the poet, politician and historian Lu You travelled upon the Grand Canal from Shaoxing to the river Yangtze, recording his progress in a diary.
In 1345 Arab traveler Ibn Battuta traveled China and journeyed through the Abe Hayat river (Grand Canal) up to the capital Khanbalik (Beijing).
In 1488, the shipwrecked Korean scholar Choe Bu travelled the length of the Grand Canal on his way from Zhejiang to Beijing (and on to Korea), and left a detailed account of his trip.
In 1793, after a largely fruitless diplomatic mission to Jehol, a large part of Lord Macartney's embassy returned south to the Yangtze delta on the Grand Canal.
In 1995 Kevin Bishop and Annabel Roberts spent four months bicycling the entire route of the Grand Canal from Beijing to Hangzhou and on to Hong Kong from September to December of that year, taking photographs and collecting information. The whole project took him four-and-a-half years to complete before his book was published in 1997.
In 2006, the travel-writer Liam D'Arcy Brown went one stage further in travelling on most of the canal which is still in water from Hangzhou to Beijing using commercial barges.
Read more about this topic: Grand Canal (China)
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“We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.”
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