Bilingual documentary narrates stories along the Grand Canal

Wonder Bridge, a bilingual documentary series celebrating the eighth anniversary of the Grand Canal being inscribed onto the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list in 2014, launched its first episode highlighting the Gongchen Bridge, the southernmost end of the canal, on June 22.

In the 10-episode series, Shi Tou and Zuo Sheng, a pair of childhood friends, set out on a journey to explore the historical stories of the canal they heard at a young age.

The docu-series conducts in-depth interviews and the filming of merchants, vendor artists, and indigenous people along the canal, including a bridge patroller who inspected the bridge until he retired, a craftsman who wakes up at 3 o'clock every day, a ballroom owner who hasn't raised their prices for 30 years and a historian who loves to write love poems. This documentary records how the lives of the people who live near the canal have changed  and the development stories from both sides of the canal.

"We trace the development of canal culture, reveal touching stories of ordinary people living by the canal and prove that there is much good and love in the city," said Wu Chen, director of the documentary.

Video provided by the Grand Canal International Communication Center

Zhang Xiang and Fang Xiaoying contributed to this story.