Route: Canal Wharf - Canal Culture Square - Liuyin Square.

Canal Wharf

With the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal achieving the first full flow of water through the river in a century, Beijing (Tongzhou) Grand Canal Cultural Tourism Scenic Area, an important node on the colorful tourism belt of the Grand Canal - is relying on the stunning scenery of the Grand Canal and the rich historical and cultural resources along the route, around the Grand Canal Forest Park, Canal Park, Hulu Lake in Xihaizi Park, the Tongzhou Randeng Pagoda and the surrounding ancient architectural complex, are making every effort to create the first 5A tourist attraction in east of Beijing"s central axis and to build a model for the high-quality development of cultural tourism in Beijing"s urban sub-center.

Among them, the Canal Wharf area is one of the highlights of the scenic area upgrading project, which will focus on Canal Wharf culture and folk culture, combine with the existing Canal Wharf substrate for renovation, introduce new businesses to revitalize the commercial area, create a leisure waterfront with Canal Wharf culture display and folklore experience as one, and recreate the bustling city and cultural atmosphere of the Canal Wharf.

The upgraded Canal Wharf will be paved with sculptures of canal culture, add a Grand Canal flagpole, implant cultural elements such as fixing stones, and add official bucket image seats and cultural scenic stones to display Canal culture. It will also make use of roof light strips, seat lights, ground buried lights and ambient decorative light poles to create a night view of the wharf.

Canal Culture Square

The Canal Culture Square is located on the north side of Dongguan Bridge in Tongzhou District, south of Tonghu Road and west of the east bank of the Canal, which is the eastern starting point of the 100-mile Chang'an Street and the northern starting point of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.

There is a colorful pagoda facing south in Beijing Canal Square, with a plaque written by Ouyang Zhongshi, "Canal Culture Square". Through the pagoda, you can see a wide open space with four tall sculptures of sailboats on the left and right, as if they are moving with the wind. Looking down at the ground, there is a shallow pond on each side, the water is clear and the bottom is visible, so you can see the people.

Moving forward, we see about five or six hundred meters of granite stone sculptures in the middle of the main road, called "Millennium Canal", recording the history of the canal.

The north side of the square is known as "the most beautiful landscape bridge on the North Canal" thousand Qianhe Xielu bridge, from a distance viewing, white bridge curved design is very futuristic, both sides of the walkway, bike path and the bridge body into one, three landscape layer of high and low like the curled lotus leaf edge.

The undulation of the walkway is divided into three layers, visitors walking on the walkway, as if in the lotus leaf leaf edge with their feet, with the ups and downs, enjoy the beauty of the two sides, as if they also "flow" with the Grand Canal.

Each layer of the walkway is equipped with an observation deck, standing on the observation deck can look out over the beautiful scenery on both sides of the Grand Canal, the confluence of the five rivers, the canal park and so on.

Liuyin Square

Liuyin Square is named after more than ten large willow trees on the square, which were there before the construction of the park, and boat-shaped tree pool seats were built around the willow trees, like a canal boat docked at the dock, on which visitors have a feeling of swimming in the canal, very comfortable.

Talking about Liuying Square, we must mention the sculpture of Ji Ba" sculpture here. This sculpture shows the unique festival of Tongzhou, the "Kai Cao (Canal Opening) Festival". 

During the early Ming Dynasty, when the Tonghui River was badly silted up, Wu Zhong, who was then the imperial official in charge of the water transport, wrote to the Jiajing Emperor to request for dredging the Tonghui River, and once the river was dredged, grain could be directly carried into the granary, saving a lot of freight and thus contributing to the construction and prosperity of Beijing. In order to praise Wu Zhong's great contribution, the people of Tongzhou built a life-time temple for him, and on the first day of March every year, when the first canal ships arrived at the dock of Tongzhou, the people from both sides of the river held a ceremony for him, which is called the "Kai Cao (Canal Opening) Festival". 

Among the 72 canal docks in two cities and four provinces (Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang) along the Grand Canal, only in Tongzhou there is a Kai Cao (Canal Opening) festival, which is a unique intangible cultural heritage in the world.