Floating in the Chinese city of Suzhou where the canals are over 2000 years old, Cron Yogitect has taken some beautiful photographs. Twenty years ago I tried to get permission from the Chinese Government to let me take a traditional English narrow boat up the 1114 mile long Grand Canal. They said "no", but times have changed and these pictures have inspired me to ask them again. Watch this space. When I asked the first time they seemed to be almost ashamed of their canals, considering them to be 'backwards'. That was just how Britain was about the canals for years. Allowing the priceless canal system to fall into rake and ruin, and driving thousands of canal people off the waterways into concrete boxes was considered 'progress'.
In China hundreds of millions of people are linked into a canal network that starts at the back of their garden with fairly small 'ditch' canals that lead to slightly bigger connections and so on. It is a bit like their version of broadband; the Chinese have had the WaterNet for thousands of years.
