Open and Shut: Circulating People and Goods, Pollution, and History in the Canals of Suzhou

Abstract

This article considers the twentieth- and twenty-first-century reinterpretation and reconfiguration of Suzhou’s canals in light of their use as a means of transport and flood control, and as a source of pollution. Throughout the Maoist period (1949-1976), the regime considered canals to be anachronistic impediments to urban renewal and filled in many urban waterways to create modern streets, industrial land, and fall-out shelters. Remaining canals were exploited for a variety of uses, including drains for pollutants as the city industrialized. In the Reform Era, from 1978 onwards, environmental protection mandates, fines for polluting paper mills and chemical plants, and the diversion of industrial and population growth to new sites restored Suzhou’s canals and public gardens as tourism and recreation assets. The archaic origin and historicity of the city’s canals, which previously inspired their destruction, now impels their refurbishment and validation as essential infrastructure of the modern city.