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Website links to
Beifan Associates
Grand Canal Homepage.
Places to go and see.
Beifan.com
Metcn8.com.
Beifanchina.com.
Chinadan.com
Photos of Dragons.
FREE photos: FREE search: Click for information.
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Events On The Grand Canal Presented On Canal Travel Website.
How can a barge with a concrete hull float? That was a question asked by many of the tourists in the group, when they left Suzhou for the Grand Canal cruise to Wuxi. This page from the Grand Canal Travel Website does not provide any answers, but it hopes to give an insight into the activities observed on the canal embankment, and more importantly, the friendly response received by the 'foreign tourists' from the 'barge people'.
We travelled on the Grand Canal in a motorised cruise boat, with tables and chairs in a large cabin below deck, and with plenty of windows through which the passing barges and canal scenery could be observed. However, all the photos on this travel website about the Grand Canal cruise, were taken from the outside deck. The canal was like a busy road through which our cruise boat Captain steered the boat with many blasts on the klaxon. For the lone barge to adjust course was fairly easy, for two men in a concrete canoe with no motor, the task was somewhat harder, and for the barge trains hauled along by tugboats, impossible! Usually the barge trains avoided the center of the canal as can be seen from the photo on this travel website page.
Cruise On Grand Canal From Suzhuo To Wuxi Passing Barges With People And Cargo.
Our own journey on the Grand Canal was only from Suzhou to Wuxi, probably quite short compared with 'local' barges with their crew and families. What we were seeing for the first time and enjoying so much, was hardly new to the barge people, with their frequent journeys up and down the canal. For them, it was time to catch up with some sleep, do some maintenance on the barge, or even do some knitting. Two men in one small boat we passed were having a meal while standing at the rear of their boat, but still warmly responded to our greetings. This warm response was evident whenever we passed barges or boats with people on them.
There were a number of barges on which sat or stood children without any form of lifejacket, and our China guide said that by law, all children travelling on the canal had to wear lifejackets. It was a law that was not well known or a law that was completely disregarded; perhaps all the children travelling on the barges were first class swimmers. What sort of education these children of the canal people received is unknown.
All the children looked happy and healthy, even though their lifestyle was completely different to the lifestyle of the children of the tourists on the cruise boat.
When our cruise boat drew near to one of the barge trains, it was difficult to see or guess what some of the barges were carrying, because the cargo stacked on deck was covered in tarpaulin sheets. Amongst the cargo carried by other barges was included, bales of rice straw, bricks, tree trunks, and barrels of goodness knows what! During the journey to Wuxi we saw barges moored nearto a brickworks, from which workers with shoulder poles were hauling building bricks to be loaded onto the barges. They were a cheerful lot of workers and waved and called out to us as we passed them; what they said is unknown!
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