The cycling route of Tongzhou Grand Canal in suburban Beijing starts at the Water Transport Dock and ends at the Canal Culture Square and Liuyin Square. The cycling lane is 50 to 60 kilometers long, with scenery such as pavilions, clear waters and green trees distributed along the water system.

Recommended route: Water Transport Dock → Canal Culture Square → Liuyin Square

Water Transport Dock

With the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal achieving the first full flow of water through the whole line in a century, Beijing (Tongzhou) Grand Canal Cultural Tourism Scenic Spot, 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, and is making every effort to create the first 5A-level tourism scenic area east of Beijing's central axis around four areas, including the Grand Canal Forest Park, the Canal Park, the Hulu Lake scenic area in Xihaizi Park, the Tongzhou Randeng Pagoda and the surrounding ancient architectural complex, to create a model for the high-quality development of cultural tourism in Beijing's urban sub-center.

Among them, the Water Transport Dock area is one of the highlights of the scenic spot upgrading project, which will focus on water transport culture and folk culture, combine with the existing Water Transport Dock foundation for renovation, introduce new businesses to revitalize the commercial area, create a leisure waterfront integrating water transport culture display and folklore experience, and recreate the bustling city and cultural atmosphere of Water Transport Dock.

The upgraded Water Transport Dock will be paved with water transport culture floor sculptures, add a Grand Canal flagpole, implant cultural elements such as fixing stones, and add Guandou (a Chinese ancient measuring tool)-like seats and cultural scenic stones to display water transport culture. It will also make use of roof light strips, seat lights, ground buried lights and ambient decorative lights to create a night view of the dock.

Canal Culture Square

The Canal Culture Square is located at the north side of Dongguan Bridge in Tongzhou District, it is bounded to the south by Tonghu Road and to the west by the east bank of the Canal, which is the eastern starting point of the Chang An Avenue and the northern starting point of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal.

Directly opposite the Beijing Canal Square is a colorful memorial archway facing south with a calligraphy inscription written by Ouyang Zhongshi, "Canal Culture Square(运河文化广场)". Through the memorial archway, you can see an open space with four tall sculptures of sailboats on each side of both the left and right, as if they were moving with the wind. Looking down at the ground, there is a shallow pond on each side, with clear water that you can see the bottom and also can reflect your face.

Go forward, you will see about five to six hundred meters of granite stone carving in the middle of the main road, called "Millennium Canal", which records the history of the canal.

The north side of the square is known as "the most beautiful landscape bridge on the North Canal" of the Qianhe Xielu Bridge, from a distance viewing, the curvilinear design of the white bridge is very futuristic, both sides of the walkways and bike paths merge with the bridge body, the three rolling landscape layers in high and low like the curling lotus leaf edge.

The walkways are divided into three layers, visitors walking on the walkways, as if they are using their feet to depict the edge of the lotus leaf, with the ups and downs, enjoy the beautiful scenery on both sides of the canal, as if they are also "flowing" with the Grand Canal.

There is a viewing platform on each layer of walkway, standing on the viewing platform, you can overlook the beautiful scenery on both sides of the Grand Canal, like Daguang Tower, the confluence of the five rivers, the Canal Park and so on.

Liuyin Square

Liuyin (Willow Shade) Square is named after more than ten large willow trees on the square, which were there before the construction of the park. The boat-shaped tree pool seat walls were built around the willow trees, which like the canal boats moored alongside the dock, and visitors sitting on it have a feeling of taking a cruise on the canal, which is very pleasant.

When talking about Liuyin Square, we must mention the "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.