China Grand Canal Museum

This guide to the China Grand Canal Museum in Hangzhou follows three men, Weng Yan, Qian Jian, and Pan Qing, who swore a brotherhood oath along this canal in the early 1700s while hauling tribute grain toward Beijing. It traces how their banned Buddhist teaching became a mutual-aid network for boatmen worn down by corrupt officials, and how Emperor Qianlong's 1768 crackdown pushed it underground. The story turns again in the 1850s, when the Taiping Rebellion and a sudden shift in the Yellow River strangled the canal trade and threw thousands of boatmen out of work. Stand at the canal's southern gate near Gongchen Bridge to hear where that unemployment led.