​Wonderful Tour on the Pinglu Canal: The Wonderful Canal

On September 16, 2026, the Pinglu Canal was officially opened to navigation. As China's first canal that has been planned and coordinated at the national level since 1949, it serves as a backbone project of the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor in western China. What unique value does this landmark project bring? What highlights does it hold? And what wonderful stories lie along its 134.2-kilometer waterway? Join us on a wonderful journey with the bilingual short-video series Wonderful Tour on the Pinglu Canal.

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is itself "a living chronicle of water conservancy." In northern Guangxi, the Lingqu Canal in Xing'an County, Guilin City, built in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), divides the flow with the huazui (plowshare-shaped spur), regulates it with the Big and Small Balance Weirs and lifts boats with its doumen (ancient Chinese lock gates); its 36 doumen raise vessels step by step over the mountain ridge. It is known as the "father of the world's ship locks" and praised as "a pearl of the world's ancient water conservancy architecture." In southern Guangxi, the Pinglu Canal sets out from the Pingtang River mouth in the county-level city of Hengzhou in Nanning, runs through Lingshan County in Qinzhou and follows the Qinjiang River into the Beibu Gulf, using its three hubs of Madao, Qishi, and Qingnian to overcome a natural drop of about 65 meters. The Lingqu Canal relies on a workforce to store and release water so that boats can "climb the stairs." In contrast, the Madao Hub ship lock of the Pinglu Canal, whose three-tier superimposed water-saving basins cut water use by more than 60 percent, has upgraded "ancient water control" into "digital and intelligent water saving." Wang Jianyun, a young man from Thailand, walked into the Lingqu Canal and the Pinglu Canal, and came to understand the Chinese wisdom on water management that has been passed down through the ages from the thousand-year-old doumen to modern water-saving ship locks.