Suzhou, Anhui: a retired watcher on the old Bian River

The Sui-Tang canal course through Sixian is described by the county as one of the surviving active stretches of the Tongji Canal. About 28 kilometres of old channel remain in the county. The phrase “active landscape” is useful: this is not a sealed archaeological trench alone, but a river space whose later uses and preservation remain part of local life.

The article follows Zhang Yongping, now retired, cycling along the canal to keep watch over it. He says that 5.8 kilometres retain their historical form. The human scale shifts the story from dynastic canal engineering to present care: an older resident returns to the waterway by bicycle, tracing a line he has known since childhood and helping others notice what remains.

Zhang says he grew up drinking canal water and calls the old waterway the Bian River. A local rhyme about Emperor Yang’s journey to Yangzhou circulates in oral memory; the report presents it as a story he encountered while reading historical sources. The distinction matters: the rhyme is a piece of local tradition, while his account of the remaining preserved channel is a contemporary statement about the landscape.

The report places the canal beside a later water-management landscape. North of the old embankment, a new Bian River channel was dug jointly by Jiangsu, Henan and Anhui for Huai River control; the article says it helped address flooding and supplied water for irrigation, transport, domestic use and aquaculture. The ancient course and the newer river therefore belong to different chapters of local water history. The article concerns Suzhou in Anhui, with its specific scene in Sixian County.