Grand Canal

Proper noun

the Grand Canal

1. A channel in Venice, Italy. It forms one of the major water-traffic corridors in the city.
   • The Buildings are generally lofty and beautiful eſpecially on the Grand Canal, over which the Bridge called Rialto exceeds all the reſt, is built of white Marble, and conſiſts of one Arch 95 foot long and 24 high.1721, John Senex, A New General Atlas, Containing A Geographical And Historical Account Of All The Empires, Kingdoms And Other Dominions Of The World, London, →OCLC, page 164
   • Until the early 1990s, crews on barges and boats chugging down China’s 2,400-year-old Grand Canal did not need familiar landmarks to tell them they were approaching the scenic city of Hangzhou.
     They could smell it.
     “The water was black,” said Zhu Jianbai, assistant director of the city government’s...2007 July 24, David Lague, “On an Ancient Canal, Grunge Gives Way to Grandeur”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 May 2015, Hangzhou Journal
2. A channel in China.
   • The Grand Canal, in Chinese Yun-ho, or ‘the Transit river,’ is of much more importance to the inland trade than either of the two great rivers of China.1832 June, “Ta-tsing Wan-neen Yih-tung King-wei Yu-too,—"A general geographical map, with degrees of latitude and longitude, of the Empire of the Ta-tsing Dynasty—may it last for ever." By Le...
   • Now the group of forty graduates were put to work as a partial solution to the shortage,¹³ and he went ahead with the establishment of a surveying bureau at Ch’ing-chiang-p’u, where the Grand Canal crosses the former course of the Yellow River.1965, Samuel C. Chu, Reformer in Modern China, Chang Chien, 1853-1926, Columbia University Press, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 150