Cultural route heritage as mobility narrative: the world heritage inscription of China’s Grand Canal

The Grand Canal is a network which for over one millennium connected the rice growing regions of southern China with the centres of political power in the north. During the 19th and 20th centuries it fell into decline. In the 1980s calls for the Grand Canal’s heritage preservation appeared. China’s heritage system was transitioning from a focus on ‘cultural relics’ to that of ‘cultural heritage’. This transition involved the theorisation, construction, and governance of a ‘cultural market’ in the context of an expanding leisure economy and mobile society. We seek here to outline features of the heritagisation of the Grand Canal that constitute an example of cultural route heritage as mobility narrative. Firstly, we bring attention to the ways in which the ‘Dayunhe’ was rediscovered, valorised and subject to a dramatic transformation in its conceived heritage value. Secondly, we examine how the Grand Canal is indicative of China’s growing interest in ‘mobility narratives’ including that of the Belt and Road Initiative. We argue that this not only reflects the project to develop narratives that bind the population to the story of the nation, but also the expansion in mobility and connectivity domestically and internationally.