The Tyrant who Built the Grand Canal & how it Changed China

[@---iv5gj]

Thank you for showing a proper MAP with terrain and rivers. This gives very important context to understanding why things happened. I am absolutely sick of maps that show a vague outline of shape of the country and throwing seemingly random dots on the shape as locations.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, and yes I feel strongly about this too, which was my very original inspiration for making the channel. I'm a huge geography buff and the lack of these details on many maps I've seen make them so much less useful for deeper analyses.

[@alexandergangaware429]

"...Kaifeng did not have zoning laws separating residential areas from markets, and thus became renowned for its boisterous streets..." Mixed commercial-residential for the win

[@SantomPh]

Kaifeng was known as the city of 3 hats - Jewish, Muslim Christian. When added to the other Chinese and other ethnicities it led to Kaifeng having numerous enclaves, each with its own business area, residential zone and even factories and butcher areas. It was basically the Five Points of New York sized up.

[@stuckupcurlyguy]

Based medium density Numtot Yimbyism

[@sunnyyoutuber10000]

Hi, Korean American here who studies and loves East Asian history, great videos on this topic as well as the Han Dynasty! It's good to see Chinese sources translated towards Anglo-speaking audiences

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, glad you've enjoyed these videos! Yes there's so much info that's available in Chinese but not English, so hopefully I can do more to present these topics to an English-speaking audience.

[@LPlFan81]

Bai Juyi later dig his own canal, when he was a governor of Suzhou (Venice of the East, as Marco Polo dubbed it), his canal was one of the first examples of purely tourist infrastructure, it connected the city and grand canal with the Tiger Hill, allowing easy access for tourists to visit this scenic hill and tomb of King Helu of Wu who was buried there (king Helu was a monarch who employed Sun Tzu, famous author of the Art of War. The name, Tiger hill, comes from legend that after king Helu's death, his tomb was fiercely guarded by a white tiger, so no-one dared to distrupt it). Bai Juyi also introduced appreticiation of the rocks (in his famous poem "Tai lake rocks"), which is why rocks become very important element of Chinese gardens and decorative item (gongshi). This practice also inspired Japanese Zen gardens. He is one of my favorite figures in history of China.

[@Ealsante]

Bai Juyi was not just famed for construction as governor of Suzhou, but also as the governor of nearby Hangzhou. There he directed the construction of a causeway and dike on the West Lake at Hangzhou, which redirected water for agriculture and also allowed visitor access to the road. The dike is known as Lord Bai's Causeway (白公堤) to this day.

[@stuckupcurlyguy]

Unreal how so many ancient Chinese dynasties basically built their own rivers. Imagine if the Roman Empire just decided to build a canal from Rome to Venice (500km, as opposed to Beijing to Luoyang 800km)

[@caoilfhionndunbar]

seeing as thats an incredibly mountainous region, I think a more apt comparison is that the whole length of the Canal would be just about equivalent to making one from the black sea, through moldova, western Ukraine, Poland, and into Germany, and then out into the Baltic at the base of the peninsual of Jutland (Denmark). although I dont know how the difficulty of making that would compare, since Im not sure how the soil differs in the regions, that would be a pretty incredibly feet.

[@watchman835]

Romans has Mediterranean Sea, they don’t need to build canals, otherwise Roman were capable.

[@caoilfhionndunbar]

@@watchman835 its less the mediteranean that influenced that and more Italy itself. China had a very flat heartland, perfect for building canals or canalizing rivers. Romes heartland was a mountainous Peninsula. as such, roads proved far more logical to construct. Romes largest Canal in length though, the Red Sea canals largest stretch was 80 kilometers, presuming they built it. Romes largest works of infastructure involving water, though, were its more then 2000 kilometers of aqueducts.

[@watchman835]

@@caoilfhionndunbar Why would you dig cannel if you can sail to almost every city via sea anyway?

[@cadian101st]

@@watchman835exactly. The only other reason to build canals is irrigation/supplying water fresh water to cites. Almost like the Romans may have built hundreds of massive and impressive waterworks that did that 🤔

[@eialzorn9284]

thank you for the video!

[@JackRyanPedro]

Casually one of the best history channels on this platform so informative

[@LevisonDavid]

fantastic contents absolutely hidden gem.the intellectual density of your videos are through the roof the quality is definitely among the best.hope to see more.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Appreciate the feedback and support, and yes I'm working on a lot more content right now too. Hoping to grow the channel over the upcoming months/years.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

Wonderful video!! You present such a concise yet informative account of this complicated episode of Chinese history!! Love your videos!!

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks for your support! I really like your channel as well, it's quite informative, and I've been looking for ideas on how best to explain classical Chinese poetry to an English-speaking audience too so have definitely gotten some inspiration from you.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

@@gatesofkilikien That sounds wonderful!! Do you have a favourite poet? Mine is Wang Wei. His poems are just so peaceful and beautiful!!

[@gatesofkilikien]

@@dr.gaosclassroom It will have to be Du Fu for me given the elegance and depth of his poems, even if this is the boring obvious answer. I like Xin Qiji a lot as well, although his poems do sometimes have too many esoteric references, and a lot of them don't rhyme well in Mandarin anymore. I've gotten more into Wang Wei and Meng Haoran the past few years, definitely starting to appreciate the tranquility in their poems more so than before.

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

@@gatesofkilikien Glad to hear these. Du Fu is definitely the finest poet of all time!! I haven't read much of Xin Qi-ji but I admire the passion expressed in some of his poem. I did a series on poetry from frontier for the Tang poets. I might make a series for the Song poets. Xin Qi-ji would certainly be one of the most important poets on my list!

[@gatesofkilikien]

@@dr.gaosclassroom Yes I really like the way he ties so many different human emotions in one poem, all while giving a masterclass in Chinese history while using very elegant phrases, almost like a modern song. The Tang frontier poems I haven't been exposed to too much besides the most famous ones, and it's an area I want to get more into in the future.

[@FrancoCastro]

Great video thanks!

[@gatesofkilikien]

thanks for your support!

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

The tyrant, believe it or not, was a great poet. Here is my video about his poems: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q33Pg3mMrbaVo9U

[@tfsweet]

Love the video and your attention to detail. Also, the video quality is very good and entertaining to watch!

[@gatesofkilikien]

thanks, appreciate it!

[@dr.gaosclassroom]

You might also be interested in the Tyrant's poetic talent. Here is my video about his poems: kzbin.info/www/bejne/q33Pg3mMrbaVo9U

[@RasheedKhan-he6xx]

Its been a year since this video was uploaded. We look forward to seeing the promised second part!

[@gatesofkilikien]

Yes it's still on my list of videos to do, and reading through the comments there seems to be a lot of interest in it, so I'll work on expediting it. It's a very technical subject though given all the rivers/lakes that changed over the last 800 years, and the fresh set of maps I'll need to illustrate them, so likely will still be some time before it's ready.

[@libertysprings2244]

Amazing video and history lesson. Thanks so much!

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, glad you found it helpful!

[@Black.Templar_002]

I'm so glad I found this channel.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, glad you've enjoyed it!

[@feilox]

really great work, also some good idioms in there!

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, appreciate the support!

[@laturnich9507]

Great video as always. Out of interest, you mentioned some of the issues with navigation on the Wei River and around the 砥柱. How navigable was the lower Yellow River beyond that point? Given the river's temperamental reputation and the fact that you rarely hear discussion of riverine naval campaigns similar to those that occurred on the Yangtze, I had just assumed the river was generally unnavigable, but you seem to imply otherwise. Would there have been extensive boat traffic along the river itself in this period outside of the canal? And if so how did they deal with the silting and flooding?

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks for your support, and to answer your question, a lot of that depended on the time period. In the very early days up until the mid-Warring States period, the lower Yellow River had multiple channels, unstable courses, and passed through a big marshy delta, so wasn’t ideal for navigation. The 1st - 9th century AD, after Wang Jing had repaired the Yellow River during the Eastern Han Dynasty, was a “Golden Age” for lower Yellow River navigation. Even then, I can’t find any information one way or another if the entire lower course of the river was navigable, as in if someone could get on a ship at Luoyang and sail all the way down to the Bohai Sea. My sense is that this technically would have been possible, although impractical. This was because outside of the Yellow River, the region had many other smaller, highly navigable rivers connected to one another via canals, and almost all of the major cities in the area were built next to these smaller rivers rather than the Yellow River given the flooding risk. So the main function of the Yellow River was to serve as a trunk connecting the network of tributaries and canals, and small sections of the Yellow River would have been important for navigation as ships transitioned from one canal/tributary to another, but other sections of the Yellow River wouldn’t have been so important. Navigation along the lower Yellow River declined a lot over the past 1,000 years, partly because of even worsening silting as more deforestation took place in the Loess Plateau, and partly because after the capital moved to Beijing, the priority became to protect the north-south waterway along the Grand Canal at all costs at the expense of east-west transport around the Yellow River. I plan to cover some of this in the next video about the Beijing - Hangzhou Grand Canal. As for naval battles along the Yangtze, not only was the Yangtze River much wider than the Yellow River, but the mountains on either side of the Yangtze made the terrain fairly closed off, so a lot of the naval battles there, like the Battle of the Red Cliffs or the Battle of Lake Poyang, essentially pitted one army trying to sail downstream against another one trying to sail upstream. The terrain around the Yellow River was far more open and the armies there often had chariots or cavalry, so even though the river network was helpful for transporting troops and supplies, the actual engagements still took place on land.

[@laturnich9507]

@@gatesofkilikien That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the in-depth response!

[@wip1664]

​​​​@@gatesofkilikien would the climate (weather) and other great events affect water buoyancy? Over 1,000 years ago, could the water in such a narrow passage be so affected, then changed over the course of time in over 1,000 year, that navigation through that affected water was so inconsistent being that human kinetic "power" was the only apparent power available... A few decades ago there was great concern about the ozone hole that had developed over Australia and then later "miraculously" was fixed or improved by some means still unclear...

[@evilmurlock]

6:42 One thing I dont understand is why the souther portions of the canal were build, the sea is so close bye its not even wort building the canal. Or was it just that the sea was too rough and the risk of pirates too high, so the canal was build more for safety reasons than to reduce the distance traveled?

[@olegstens7734]

Good stuff as always!

[@gatesofkilikien]

thanks!

[@XIXCentury]

Subscribed because I'm trying to get into Chinese history

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks for the support!

[@drewgatewood1864]

Your videos are incredible!

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks, glad you like them!

[@drewgatewood1864]

@@gatesofkilikienCan I ask where you learned/studied all of this history? I have studied Chinese for a very long time, and I've never come across an English Language resource as good as your videos for explaining the many different eras of Chinese history in such an approachable fashion.

[@wheezysqueezebox7651]

I've seen that gameboard in Chinese historical dramas, or pseudo historical dramas, including "The Rebel Princess," and wondered about it... what is that game? How is it played? All episodes of The Rebel Princess are on KZbin, in Mandarin, with English subtitles. Amazing costumes, complicated politics, lots of battles. I couldn't place this series in an historical context.

[@gatesofkilikien]

It's Chinese chess - some of the pieces move similarly as Western chess, but there's also a ton of other unique rules.

[@Niehaus723]

Amazing channel

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks!

[@TheMadisonHang]

@2:22 Grain?

[@uncletiggermclaren7592]

Very interesting, I am glad I found your channel. Chinese history is a bit confusing to people in the West because of various cultural differences of course, but I found the addition of portraits of the historical figures to be helpful. Very little of the true realities of historical figures can be understood from the stories and records of their contemporaries. Most of it was written by their craven servants or their inveterate enemies. Propaganda mostly, either way. However, even that is interesting stuff.

[@josemolinanavarro5741]

When will we get the New Grand Canal vid?

[@gatesofkilikien]

I've started a draft on part 2 (Ming-Qing Dynasties), although it's been particularly hard to write because there's a lot of technical details that require in-depth research, especially since I want to go into the environmental impact of the canal and government policies surrounding it. It's still on my list of videos to write, it just tends to get pushed back in favor of other videos I'm working on more actively now that are easier to write.

[@josemolinanavarro5741]

@@gatesofkilikien Wow... You're alive!! Great to know you're working on this and don't do an "Oversimplified" with your channel. Keep up the good work and good luck with all your endeavours

[@gatesofkilikien]

@@josemolinanavarro5741 Haha thanks, yeah things were busier than expected over the holidays so I've been slower than usual, plus my videos are getting more complex so fact-checking and production are also taking much longer than before. I'm slowly getting back on track though and am aiming to get some videos across the finish line in the near future.

[@hugowilliams1988]

It was constructed in Sui Dynasty for the preparation of war against Gaoli(now North Korea ). Sui Dynasty existed for 32 years and invaded Korea three times during this short period. Eventually it was replaced by Tang dynasty. Tang invaded north Korea again because it blocked xinluo( now south Korea)'s tribute to Tang.

[@_Wai_Wai_]

I'm impressed that the short lived Sui Dynasty would undertake such a grand project.

[@transvestosaurus878]

Five million people worked on it! That's half the population of the Holy Roman Empire at the time! Five times the population of medieval Britain!

[@xz1891]

China's History and geography has its own governing laws. If Qin-han and Sui-tang pattern follows that after a major dynastic changeover, a short lived unification (2 or 3 decades) will lead to an even longer, stable and prosperous dynasty (lasting 2 to 4 hundred years), then PRC will at least have another 200 years of 国祚 after ROC, which happened to only rule Chinese mainland and Taiwan province (🇨🇳 + 🇹🇼) for 2 generations (CKS and his son, CCK). 中华人民共和国万岁！

[@abc-id1sq]

This video reminds me of some of the poems I had studied in the past. Never connected them with their background story until I watched this 😂 1)商女不知亡国恨，隔江犹唱后庭花(this is particularly relevant because it was written by Du Mu) 2)山外青山楼外楼，西湖歌舞几时休 春风熏得游人醉，直把杭州作汴州

[@pdruiz2005]

I am going to do a VERY crappy job of translating the last poem. I understand most of the characters! But the translation probably won't be good since this is Classical Chinese (?). The outer mountain, the blue-green mountain pavilion, the outer pavilion; The Western Lake sings and dances for how long. The spring wind (something) with the people swimming (something); (Something) in Hangzhou, laboring at (something) country.

[@abc-id1sq]

@@pdruiz2005 Keep in mind the context, it's very important. It was written after Song dynasty lost the north. 山外青山楼外楼 Outside the mountains, there are more green mountains, layers and layers of pagoda (this phrase signifies the wealth and beauty of Hangzhou) 西湖歌舞几时休 (Endless Operas/singings and entertainment around the west lake, implication of decadence, people already forgetting about the North) 春风熏得游人醉 (The warm spring breeze heartens all who travel here, as if engulfing the travelers in a tipsy good feel. This describes the mild climate of Hangzhou, in contrast to the harsh north aka norther capital BianZhou. Again implying that people have gotten way too comfortable and decadent after losing the north) 直把杭州作汴州 (Some are so taken in by Hangzhou that they have forgotten about taking back the north and they rather delude(or give up) themselves and pretend Hangzhou is BianZhou) The last phrase is the key 🗝️. The first three line is pretext. They read like a poet describing his day out as a tourist himself until you get to the last phrase, which ties the whole thing together. It's a lamentation of having lost the northern half of the country, using the contrast of BianZhou/Hangzhou as the central literal device 游人 = travelers。游 has several meanings，游戏 = games or to play。游玩/旅游 = to journey/travel。 作 can be hard to translate but amongst its many meaning, one of them is to pretend. 我把它当作我妈 = I see her like a mother to me. 做作 = to do pretend aka pretentiousness.

[@harryloo8544]

Why use canal instead of the coast?

[@axelNodvon2047]

Because rivers are better for traveling my guy. Rivers were basically the ancient world's natural highways for many civilizations

[@harryloo8544]

@@axelNodvon2047 But you dont have to build and maintain the coastal seas. A navy for pirates maybe well be needed, but that is an added benefit of having a navy for foreign trade.

[@gatesofkilikien]

For this period in question, it's also because Chang'an and Kaifeng were inland cities, so canals are much more direct. I eventually plan to do a part 2 video on the Grand Canal of the Ming and Qing Dynasties which connected the Yangtze Delta to Beijing. One of the central topics for that video is going to be exactly what you asked, since Beijing is close to the sea they really could have and should have used the coast rather than the canal. Ultimately it came down to a number of factors like political conservatism, fear of piracy, and the entrenched economic interests of the people along the canal. It's a very interesting discussion, especially since there are parallels to some of the policy debates we have nowadays.

[@klein910502]

I can see why this question is asked considering the Mediterranean. The pacific (the Bo Sea, the Yellow Sea and the Eastern Sea) are way choppier and more dangerous compared to Mediterranean. Sea shipping did become an option that was debated during the Song dynasty and practiced during the Yuan.

[@熊唯嘉]

盡道隋亡為此河 至今千里賴通波 若無水殿龍舟事 共禹論功不較多 --皮日休《汴河懷古》

[@Tinil0]

Here's a question if you ever see this: How trusted are Chinese histories going that far back in regards to things like bias among the writers? Like, Emperor Yang made a lot of enemies for example, and obviously some of what they wrote might be exaggerations or even lies if politically necessary. It's certainly true in other regions historically where we have to take a LOT of salt with what the written record might say about, say, specific roman emperors because of how the writers felt about them. Is there a strong historiographical debate among scholars as to how to interpret the historical data or is it pretty much accepted that the main histories are close enough to right that they can be trusted? Obviously this is going to differ a lot across history and among people so it's a bit of a too broad to answer question, but I am just curious how much salt I should be taking when history HATES or LOVES an emperor.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Great question, and in general with Chinese history, as with Western history, everything we read should be taken with a baseline level of skepticism. Historians had all kinds of biases and reasons for writing things the way they did, not to mention with how limited communication was back then, it was fairly easy to get basic facts wrong just through hearsay alone. Most of what's considered "canonical" history in the Chinese historical tradition were also officially sponsored by the succeeding dynasties, so there's often huge conflicts of interest for the rulers of a new dynasty to paint the previous dynasty a certain way. With that said outright fabrication was still likely difficult for a number of reasons. Keeping an accurate narrative history was considered a critically important responsibility, and very few scholars were willing to risk their future reputations to outright lie. There's also a long-held tradition for historians, even when they could not outright state the truth, to still write things in a way that's "technically true" but also make it kind of obvious that things were amiss. A very famous example of this was the murder of Emperor Cao Mao by Sima Zhao during the Three Kingdoms Period. The original account in The Records of the Three Kingdoms basically just said that the emperor died and not much else, but the way a lot of surrounding events were written made the whole situation seemed very fishy, and then an annotation added in the 400s AD, after the fall of the Jin Dynasty, basically gave us all the juicy details we have today. Another thing that may have made outright fabrication much harder was that most ancient Chinese histories were written in biography form rather than annals form, and to piece together the narrative one would essentially have to read the biographies of a bunch of different people. As confusing as this approach was, it does make it harder to change the narrative because then the biographies of a bunch of people would all have to be rewritten to keep the story consistent, and historians could easily drop clues in seemingly unrelated biographies that things are amiss, for future generations to read into. There's also a long tradition of scholars, especially during the Ming and Qing Dynasties that we have records of today, of scholars scrutinizing over just about every word in the historical record to try and piece together what happened, and that's long before modern-day scholarship techniques/theories or archaeological discoveries. Chinese historiography is an immensely fascinating, albeit technical, topic, and all this is to say that even though there's a ton of propaganda and a lot of famous stories are likely embellishments, there's also lots of great ways we have today to try and deduct the truth.

[@holeeshi9959]

a large reason the Grand Canel was built was also political, Sui was usurped from the Xianbei Northern dynasty by a Han official(even if he is related to the emperor, and race is more symbolic than genetic at that point since most Northern China elite is mixed), while Yang Jian/Wen Emperor, being a Northern dynasty man through and through, has a lot of support from the nobilities of the Northern dynasty, his son would have much less support from the military families that put his father in power. Sui Yang Emperor's big plan was trying to get the Southern Dynasty nobilities to be the core of his administration. the war on Korea was also partially deviced to weaken the military families of the Northern Chinese by taking control over the military from them, it's originally an "too many soldiers not being used after unifying China", but then pride got to him since he can't lose to a small country like Korea.....and the whole thing just backfired, and one of the Northern dynasty military family took over after Sui fell.

[@SiGa-i1r]

Pride before the fall.

[@TheonormalMBV]

About the Du Mu quote, I didn't know China had an approximation of Geishas, or is it another word entirely, not 芸者 but just you translating it into that.

[@abc-id1sq]

歌妓 or 商女

[@SB-qm5wg]

They were making massive canals in 500bc. Wow..

[@bofpwet9500]

👍

[@gatesofkilikien]

Thanks!

[@egay86292]

tell us how engineers determined levels and flow and show us what was shipped and how.

[@notusneo]

Oh i thought this was abouth the three dam gorges

[@nasigorengpecelesteh1506]

Work to death??

[@SantomPh]

that's what labor camps do.

[@sell2012]

some of the time line of these canals make no sense lol, should be taken with a grain of salt.... also these canals messed up chinas geography and weather patterns. which they have to deal with today.

[@deiansalazar140]

MFer thinks he knows more than centuries of documentation and experts.

[@AntiManlet-pp2fk]

North China (from Beijing to Manchuria) is Altaic land, not Han Chinese anymore. After 2000 years of nomadic invasions most of Han Chinese moved south to Southern China.. Southern Chinese are 100% Han Chinese..

[@wip1664]

Why is it always an assumption that the ancient workers were from the "peasant" class? There were peasant workers of course. But not all workers were peasants. This storyline makes the story more interesting perhaps, but definitely political and emotionally inspiring. Emotions are least useful in true productivity. The canal existed, and still does. The historical accounts are only half true. The untrue (or very less than truthful) information can become inspiration to unnecessary growth, or obstructions.

[@gatesofkilikien]

Good point - I was rewatching some of my earlier videos and noticed I used "peasant" on quite a few occasions. In the case of the Grand Canal the vast majority of the workers may have been peasants, but like you said many others were also not. For my more recent videos I've generally switched to using words such as "farmers" or "subjects" instead.

[@SantomPh]

@@gatesofkilikien like the Pyramids we have a habit of stereotyping the workers as being low class, barely fed people who are just dragged off the line as soon as they expire. The Hollywood notions that the workers were ethnic minorities make the idea even worse. Evidence shows that a lot of the pyramid workers were not only paid, but fed with red meat (an expensive delicacy). The fact that each class of Chinese society also had its own peasant level people complicates things. Lu Bei, one of the famed heroes of the Three Kingdoms era and a member of the ruling Han royal family apparently lived with his mother as a mere sandal maker. There were peasants in the militia and armies as well who worked as laborers and menial workers.

[@masterkoi29]

Let me give you a clear info about thr founder of sui dynasty. The founder of sui dynasty comes from the HAN chinese, his parents we're both han chinese and his fathers descendants comes from the military general of the han dynasty.