Liuzi Canal Archaeological Site 柳孜运河遗址

About Liuzi Canal Archaeological Site

Liuzi Canal Archaeological Site (柳孜运河遗址) is an excavated stretch of the old Tongji Canal (通济渠), part of the Sui and Tang Grand Canal, at Liuzi village (柳孜村) in Baishan town (百善镇), Suixi County, Huaibei (淮北), Anhui.

From the Han dynasty onward the site of Liuzi village was a prosperous trading town; under the Song it was Liuzi town (柳孜镇) in Linhuan County (临涣县). Local people long called an old embankment here the "Sui dyke" (隋堤) and took it for the Tongji Canal, but there was no physical proof until 1999, when rebuilding of provincial road 303 through the village turned up finds. A rescue dig of more than 900 m² that year fixed the canal's route through this area and was named one of China's ten major archaeological discoveries of 1999.

Two digs, in 1999 and 2012–2013, exposed Tang and Song channel beds, embankments, stone-built bridge piers and a road, and recovered nine wooden boats together with ceramics, bone and horn objects, stone anchors and copper coins. The Suixi County government describes the stone piers as the first building remains of this kind found anywhere on the Grand Canal, and the porcelain comes from more than twenty kilns across the Sui, Tang and Song. The 1999 platform, 14.3 m long, was first read as a wharf; after a second Song platform turned up in the later dig, the pair were reinterpreted as the piers of a timber bridge. The later dig also revealed a Jin-dynasty post road crossing the canal and a Song narrowed channel lined with timber (木岸狭河).

The State Council made it a nationally protected heritage site in June 2001, when it was called the Liuzi Canal Wharf Site (柳孜运河码头遗址). Since 2014 it has been one component of the Grand Canal World Heritage Site. Southeast University (东南大学) designed a permanent protective hall for the excavation: 5,575.2 m² of floor space on a long-span steel frame modelled on ship masts. Ceramics from the site are shown at Huaibei Museum (淮北市博物馆), which also has a reconstruction of the excavation.

What to look for

• The two Song-dynasty stone platforms, now read as piers of a timber bridge over the Tongji Canal
• The permanent protective hall for the excavation, designed by Southeast University with a mast-like steel frame
• China Grand Canal Liuzi Culture Park (中国大运河柳孜文化园) in Liuzi village, with flower fields
• At Huaibei Museum: Sui, Tang and Song porcelain from the site, including a Northern Song qingbai figure of a boy holding a ball from the Jingdezhen kilns
• At Huaibei Museum: a reconstruction of the dig with a Tang cargo boat and a Tang dugout canoe

Location & getting there

Getting to Liuzi Canal Archaeological Site

• Search for 柳孜运河遗址 with 淮北市 and 濉溪县.