"Tai'erzhuang enjoys great fortune bestowed by the Grand Canal," Chen says.

The rebuilt town is a 5-A site - the top national tourism designation.

About 2.6 million tourists visited Tai'erzhuang per year, making it Shandong's third most popular attraction, after Confucius' hometown Qufu and Tai'an city's Mount Taishan.

"Zaozhuang had no tour buses or local tour guides before it was rebuilt," deputy director of the city's tourism office Du Jianmin says.

"It now has more than 100 tour buses and 400 local tour guides."

The city previously had 4,700 hotel beds with a less than 40 percent occupancy rate but now has at least 50,000 hotel beds.

"And four five-star hotels are now under construction, but it will still be insufficient to meet demand in peak seasons," Du says.

Yu Fuxin, a 52-year-old writer born in Taiwan, has decided to spend the rest of her life at Tai'erzhuang, where her family originated.

But she was less than impressed when she first visited decades ago.

"The coal-producing city was dull and dilapidated," she recalls. "I wouldn't have visited if my grandmother didn't live here."

But now she's glad to call Tai'erzhuang home, she says, standing on the Grand Canal's Yu Family Dock.

"The canal brings prosperity and hope," she says.

The cultural resources that spring from the waterway will never dry up, Chen says. It transcends time and has enriched people for generations, he says.

"The canal's significance isn't its engineering but rather its legacies," Chen says. "This transcends all changes."

zhaoruixue@chinadaily.com.cn

A newly opened folk art museum becomes another tourist site in Tai'erzhuang.

Barges pass the Zaozhuang section of the Grand Canal.

(China Daily 04/03/2014 page18)